Swim Against Malaria

So, for school, our mom told us we had to figure out a way to do something positive with our skills that would help others and then, miraculously our Aunt Debbie sent us this cool email about swim for malaria.

Malaria is the largest killer of children in the world. 1 to 3 million people die from malaria each year. 70% of the deaths are children under 5 years old
One child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. That’s equivalent to seven jumbo jets full of children dying from malaria every day. Malaria kills so many because...
Over 60% of the world’s population lives in malaria infected areas. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes feed on human blood. That’s how people get infected. People living in malaria regions cannot take malaria-protecting drugs. The drugs taken by travellers are too strong to be taken for any more than a few weeks. Malaria is preventable and treatable. The best prevention is to avoid being bitten at all. Sleeping under a bednet is the single most effective way of preventing malaria. Bednets protect people at night when mosquitoes are most active. We can help by supplying and fitting bednets (mosquito nets). Every £ 1 million we raise can help to stop almost 20,000 people from dying. U$ 5 buys one bednet, U$ 100 buys twenty mosquito nets and saves 1 child's life. Every net matters.

More than 250,000 swam on 3 Dec 2005 for the first World Swim Against Malaria. It is already the largest participatory swim ever. 100% of the money raised so far will buy 300,000 long lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) costing US$5 each. 600,000 (mainly) children will now be protected at night from biting insects. This will save the lives of 15,000 children. The first 175,000 nets have been or are being delivered and 125,000 are on their way.

So, in the month of April, we are swimming 100,000 laps (2,500,000 yards) for malaria.

We hope you'll swim too and get others to sponsor you or just donate some money to help kids in another part of the world. If you'd like to sponsor us or you just want more information, click the title above or go to www.worldswimagainstmalaria.com. If you want to see who has sponsored us or how many nets our sponsors have paid for, search for swimmin twin 1 and swimmin twin 2.

Update: We finished our swim and we raised $625 for 125 nets!!! Thank you for sponsoring us.

Posted by T and H