Although malaria is not prevalent in the United States today, malaria claims twice the number of African children as AIDS. According to the World Health Organization, one in every five childhood deaths (20 percent) is due to malaria. Sadly, a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria.

Malaria is very preventable and very inexpensive to prevent! How can we help, and importantly how can we get children involved to help their peers throughout the world?

I implemented a program for my daughter’s third grade class to raise money for malaria.  I taught a simple lesson to the kids on malaria, and how easy it is to prevent it by the use of malaria nets. I also based the lesson in scripture that Jesus would want us to help those who are sick. And by helping those who are sick, we are serving Him (Matthew 25:35-40)!

For the month of April, the third grade classes will collect coins and at the end of April we will send money to His Nets.  His Nets is a non-profit organization which purchases and distributes mosquito nets to families in Africa to protect them from malaria infected mosquitoes. Because many homes in Africa consist of one small room, an entire family can use one large net for up to four years for protection from mosquitoes at only $6.00 per net! For less than the price of a dinner or movie, one life could be saved and an entire family can sleep in peace.

There are many other great organizations that you might partner with. Check out these websites:

1. Compassion International-Bite Back
2. Sweet Sleep-Nickels for Nets
3. Malaria No More

Take a stand and do something this month to fight malaria!  Let me know if you need a copy of the lesson I did–I love to share!

One Hen has an interactive website for children to explore after they’ve read the book.  The website includes games related to the story, a video of the real Kojo (now all grown up), and lesson ideas for educators. Kids can earn beads by playing interactive games on the website. Each bead (equal to one cent) donated at the end of the game turns into real money. “Bead money” is saved and goes towards real microfinance loans.

I’ve used this book with several groups of children. We even acted out parts of the story. Then I challenged kids to work together to earn money to buy a chicken, pig, duckling, or other animal that will help provide a livelihood for a family in poverty. You can go online to find gift catalogs from organizations like Compassion International, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Partners International, and Heifer Project. I printed out pages from several of these gift catalogs to show the children how much these animals cost. The children were amazed that they could order animals from catalogs and excited about this unusal way of helping the needy.