Choosing to Participate:
A Social Justice Service Project on Sustainability

Overall, our workshop went pretty well. I had a few fears of not having enough kids in it, but we had a lot. Apparently the blurb we wrote worked. It was fun seeing the kids try and answer the easy, medium, and hard questions from their memory; it proves that we were teaching them something. The idea of giving them a sheet with all of the answers for two minutes before the questions start seems to have worked the best for teaching them the facts about malaria. I also had worries about the actual quiz not lasting long enough, but it took 15 minutes because we added the Final Jeopardy. (Kids would bet their points on a question at the end) Also, during the five minute long parts where my workshop members and I had to talk, we did not make any mistakes about what we said. We gave each workshop member a subject, and they explained it and connected it to what I and the others said.

The Day of Learning was something I was confused about for a while. I didn’t quite understand what we would be doing, but the activities that were planned worked very well and I am happy we made movies and taught workshops.

The fliers I created are looking good, in my opinion. There were a lot of edits that I had to do, and Rob e-mailed me the official Against Malaria Logo. Right now, the fliers have a blue and white background (an image I copied from the website and rotated to make fit; I want a uniform look between the site I’m advertising and the fliers), with the words “Help Fight Malaria” printed at a slight slant. In the middle, I have an image of Africa I edited to be light blue and look like a 3-D object. On top of this, I placed the official logo. Under that, the URL of the Against Malaria Website. On the back of the fliers, I put a description of Against Malaria.

As I said earlier, I hope to convince people to spread the word of Against Malaria. The people who directly recieve the fliers may not donate, but the people they tell might. On the website, I have seen videos of advertisements for this organization, and I am trying to achieve the same goal as those advertisements. (I was surprised to see a televised ad campaign; I didn’t think that Againt Malaria was that funded.)

I have created fliers stating the purpose of Against Malaria and promoting the www.AgainstMalaria.com website. I have also sent out an e-mail to Rob Mather, asking is opinion on the fliers. I intend on distributing them over the weekend. My plan is to first and foremost, make many copies of my fliers and cut them out. I then will go to a very popular area, such as an entrance to Central Park, to hand them out to passersby. What I hope to achieve with this is more awareness about malaria. I am not trying to get them to donate money to the website, but I am trying to get them to at least look around the website and tell their friends, who may give charity. Perhaps I would hand one to a passing school teacher, and he / she might be interested and start a project similar to our sustainability project.

I’m actually pretty excited to go out and distribute the fliers I created. I’m excited because I may find and start conversations with people who have similar organizations locally, who I can meet and further my sustainability project. This would be rather good because we can’t meet with Rob Mather and physically help out with whatever he needs; we can only talk to him over the phone and interview him.

Getting the message out to at least one person who gives a donation to the website is my goal for this weekend, and I think I might achieve that, adding one more person to the three million strong donation list.

    I am still trying to think of how I can help the organization in a significant way. I believe that I need to organize something large to raise money, such as a bake sale with goods made by our entire sustainability group. I am also thinking about creating fliers for Madness Against Malaria, which I could hand out around the school and on the street. I was also thinking of helping with any local organization related to Against Malaria in any way. In my e-mail to Rob, I ran all of these ideas by him. I also asked if he had any more.

I browsed the website for a bit, looking at what was on it. I saw some television advertisements on it, and perhaps I could send people I know links to those videos. Starting a chain - email could really spread the message, and get people donate only five dollars to the cause.

Our group listened to Rob Matler describe his experiences in the creation of Madness Against Malaria over the phone (He is English). He said that it all started out when he was watching a documentary about a little girl in England named Terri, who had burns over ninety percent of her body. Rob really felt horrible about how bad her condition was, and decided to raise money for her. He decided to do this by organizing a swim, and in 3 weeks got a total of $400,000 for the girl. All of her future operations were paid for. Now Rob needed a new cause to raise money for, and he found it in the fight against malaria. He set a goal of getting 1 million people to swim for malaria, but only got a quarter of that. He described malaria as being completely preventable, and that a five dollar bed-screen could protect people while they’re sleeping. He said that 20 bed-screens ($100 worth) would save the life of a child.

The way Rob spoke showed a confident character, one who would be determined to fight the easily-prevented malaria. I think I will enjoy working for this cause, and speaking with him more.