Catching up with Malaria No More: “Twitter net” delivery, World Briefing and more

By Kim Chou on March 15, 2010 | 1169No Commentshttp://think-social.org/catching-up-with-malaria-no-more-twitter-net-delivery-world-briefing-and-surround-sound-in-senegal.htmCatching+up+with+Malaria+No+More%3A+%22Twitter+net%22+delivery%2C+World+Briefing+and+more2010-03-15+12%3A25%3A43Kim+Chou

The last time you heard about Malaria No More on this site, it was for a Think Social Award nomination last fall.

Think Social caught up last week with Scott Case, CEO of Malaria No More, a non-profit dedicated to ending malaria deaths. Last April, for World Malaria Day, Malaria No More launched a social media campaign to spread awareness about malaria and asked people to tweet donations that would go toward mosquito nets for families in Senegal. Thanks to a little support from Ashton Kutcher  and Kutcher’s subsequent race with CNN to one million Twitter followers, his pledge of 10,000 nets and resulting Twitter net retweets  Malaria No More was able to raise funds for 89,000 mosquito nets. The nets are being delivered now in Velingara, Senegal.

Read nore on Twitter nets and Malaria No More’s new campaign after the jump.

On Twitter Nets

We had the notion of using social media potentially to get a message out, said Case, via phone from Connecticut. World Malaria Day happens every April, 25^th of April  [and] as we ran up to that date, we thought of using Twitter specifically to raise awareness for the cause.

What Case calls a famous race” that of Ashton Kutcher versus CNN raised the profiles of malaria and World Malaria Day, and also drew attention to the charitable utility of social media tools. I would suggest that what we saw last april was an early example off the potential social impact of Twitter, Case said.

But why did it take until now to actually turn the “Twitter nets” into actual mosquito nets, delivered to actual families who needed them? The region of Senegal that is receiving the Twitter nets gets hit by the rainy season starting in June and July, continuing on through November.

“You start the process in May with identifying where’s the need and in the process of actually procuring the nets,” Case explained. “You actually have to make the nets; you need to have the right specifications for the nets. [It] takes six months to produce them, and you can move as fast as you can move.”

Case says Malaria No More got the physical nets in December, and began distributing in January, to a few key areas in Velingara, Senegal. Malaria No More’s partners, including the Peace Corps, “are going from village to village” in that particular health district, Case said, and as of this time have distributed nets to 611 villages. The goal is to distribute all of the Twitter nets by April, he said, so families are ready by the start of the coming rainy season.

Closing the feedback loop

Finally, to show what people who donated Twitter nets what their donations actually purchased, Malaria No More brought Twitter icons to the villages where they were delivering nets and took photos.

Among the lessons he’s learned from the Twitter nets process, Case said, “It’s really important that you do what you say you’re going to do, and you do it in the way that you say that you’re going to do it — and you provide real feedback to people.”

On Twitter and the potential for social impact

What uses of social media has Case found especially noteworthy in the year (or just about) since the Twitter net campaign?

I think that it starts with a conceptual notion, which is that Twitter has become a channel for communicating interesting ideas and happenings in the world, among initially your circle of followers, and those you follow, and the big ideas and the powerful stories ripple very quickly, Case said. [The recent earthquake in] Haiti is an obvious example how that story has unfolded and continues to unfold is really intriguing. It shows not only the power of stories coming from traditional news stories, but also [from] people who had family members in Haiti, people trying to find family members in Haiti, people of Haitian descent in the United States, and aid workers seeing this first-hand and communicating about them.”

Utilization of social media tools made the reportage after the earthquake “richer and deeper than just the one-way story that was coming out of a cable news channel,” Case said, though he also makes note of journalists’ Twitter missives supplementing their on-air work.

The World Briefing

Today, Monday, Malaria No More is launching the 2010 World Briefing project, in partnership with the pharmaceutical company Novartis.

Last year, the organization asked supporters in the United States to share their ideas for raising awareness about malaria. Case said the organization is extending the challenge this year by asking participants from the U.S. as well asArgentina, Ecuador, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Philippines and Venezuela to tell a story about malaria, but do it through various forms  and promoting participation through multiple social media channels. It’s in part a bid to get young, prospective journalists to talk about this specific subject. The art of journalism should be media independent,Case said. As part of the challenge, Malaria No More is asking participants to craft a 500-word blog post and then explain why they should win the contest with a pitch via Twitter — that is, in 140 characters or less.

(Other writers reading this, don’t get your panties in a twist about tweet journalism just yet.)

When last years winner went to Africa, she blogged and tweeted her experience in real time, then summarized the trip with a series of stories that were published later, Case said. Now, he said, participants will use social media throughout the process. The World Briefing challenge will be active on Twitter, Facebook, the Malaria No More blog, and a separate worldbriefing.org web site.

Is tweeting for a cause enough?

Case said when you tweet or text a short-code to donate 10 dollars for a mosquito net, for Malaria No More, you know that those 10 dollars will ultimately help a family in Africa. “That can go a long way toward changing the world,” he said.

But one criticism that has accompanied the growth of social media techniques by charities is the charge of “slacktivism” — that you’re really not doing all that much from your computer or your cell phone. Case begs to differ.

“In my view, and this my personal take on the world, anything that gets people thinking about and interacting in civil society at any level is a good thing,” he said. “If we’re really honest about what has gotten most people active in their communities, it started with one small step. Maybe that was a conversation with a neighbor. Maybe it was a teacher showing [someone] an article. Everything begins with a simple act, and I think it’s overly critical to think ‘Maybe the only thing I did in helping get those Twitter nets to families in Africa was simply retweet that message.’ ” That retweet puts malaria on that person’s “radar screen,” Case said, and as a result maybe that person will one day see a blog post on malaria and want to learn more about the disease themselves, or perhaps participate in the World Briefing.