I am once again asking you to buy malaria nets

Your donation will be TRIPLED (up to $2000)

This is a post for my birthday fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation here. If you don’t want to donate through Facebook, you can also send me proof of a donation and I will count it towards the total for matching purposes. Thanks to an anonymous friend, the first $2000 donated will be double matched(!!!)

I have been writing about malaria for seven years now and I still never feel like I’ve found the right thing to say.

In some sense, the problem is just too big to really describe. More than six hundred thousand people die of malaria every year, many of them children. The millions of kids who survive malaria suffer in other ways. Many fall behind in school, contract major neurological diseases, or face developmental hurdles that make it harder for them to earn a living as adults. Malaria is not just a leading cause of death: childhood infections keep countless people trapped in cycles of poverty that will follow them their entire lives.

Numbers like this ought to spur us into action, driving us to fight for children’s health with every fiber of our being. But too often they don’t. Too often the vast scale of disease makes us freeze up, certain that anything we do will be insignificant compared to the overwhelming plague of death.

And that’s why I think it’s important to remind ourselves, again and again, that we can do *something*. We can save a child’s life. Last year we saved two! Two full human lives, just by clicking social media buttons! Along the way, we’ve prevented other children from debilitating seizures, from falling behind in school, and from mosquito-induced poverty, and we can do that again. Resist the urge to compare this to the total scale of disease and call real children insignificant. Resist the “drop in the bucket” nihilism. We are not called to be the saviors of the entire human race. We are called to do what we can, and one very real thing we can do is this.

Much like last year, I have a summer job whose income I don’t really need, and so for my birthday this year I will match any donations up to $5,000. In addition, a friend who’d like to remain anonymous has agreed to match any donations up to $2,000.

That means the first $2,000 donated will be TRIPLED, and up to an additional $3,000 will be DOUBLED. That means if we raise $2,000 we will (statistically) save one life, and if we raise another $3,000 we will have saved two.

Every bit counts, especially with this kind of donation matching. I really hope and pray you will consider giving. Much love to you all.

P.S. As always, if you want to know why I picked this particular charity I would love to talk to you about it! I’m currently traveling so will be a bit slow to rely but would love to set up a time to talk next week.

P.P.S. If you work for a company that matches donations, feel free to donate in a way that will get a match and send me a screenshot of the receipt and I will count both your donation and your company’s match towards this matching.