Unusual allies, like the Methodist and Lutheran Churches, the National Basketball Association and the United Nations Foundation, are stoking the passion for nets that prevent malaria. The annual American Idol Gives Back fundraising television special has donated about $6 million a year for two years. The music channel VH1 made a fundraising video featuring a pesky man in a mosquito suit.

It is an appeal that clearly resonates with young people. Addressing a conference of 6,000 Methodist youths in North Carolina last year, Bishop Thomas Bickerton held up his own $10 and told the crowd: "This represents your lunch today at McDonald's or your pizza tonight from Domino's. Or you could save a human life."

The lights were so bright that he could see only what was happening at his feet. "They just showered the stage with $10 bills," Bickerton said. "In 30 seconds, we had $16,000. I'm just lucky they didn't throw coins."

Part of what has helped the campaign catch on is its sheer simplicity and affordability - $10 buys one net to save a child. ‘Nothing But Nets', the best-known campaign, has raised $20 million from 70,000 individuals, most of it in donations averaging $60.

That is a small fraction of the overall need, which experts estimate at $2.5 billion. But it gives the effort a populist edge, and participation is psychologically rewarding for anyone whose philanthropic pockets are shallower than those of Bill Gates.

"The first time I donated money, after my bar mitzvah, it was for someone who needed a heart transplant," said Daniel Fogel, 18, a founder of his Waltham, Massachusetts, high school's juggling club, which raised $2,353 for nets last year. "But I had the feeling: Am I really helping? But if you can say $10 saves a life, that makes students feel they can help a lot. And every student has $10."

Emily Renzelli of West Virginia University learned about malaria on a trip to South Africa.

She raised about $1,000 through bake sales and parties where students were snagged in nets and not released until they recited facts about malaria. Naomi Levine, an expert on philanthropy at New York University, said young people "more than ever want to do something."

"You won't find them giving money to research," she added. "It's too far off. But a net is something you can hold in your hand. And any time young people get interested in any form of philanthropy, it's a good thing."

Crucial to the drive against malaria, which kills an estimated one million people a year, mostly in Africa, has been the development of an inexpensive, long-lasting insecticidal net. Unlike old nets, which either had no insecticide or had to be dipped twice a year, the new ones keep killing or repelling mosquitoes for three to five years. When more than 60% of the inhabitants of a village use them over their beds while they are sleeping, malaria rates usually drop sharply.

Major donors have focused on malaria since the creation in 2001 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has paid for 106 million nets. President Bush in 2005 started the President's Malaria Initiative, which has bought six million so far.

The Gates Foundation has spent almost $1.2 billion on malaria, and although most goes toward research into vaccines and new drugs, part went to match the first $3 million raised by ‘Nothing But Nets'.

Although in recent years a welter of malaria campaigns has sprung up worldwide, participation in the United States was anaemic until two years ago when Rick Reilly, then the back-page columnist for Sports Illustrated, took his daughter to Venice.

Exhausted from shopping, he said in a recent interview, he returned alone to their hotel.

Idly channel-surfing, he stumbled onto a BBC documentary about malaria in Africa.

Imitating a British accent, he said: "Up to 3,000 children die needlessly each day of malaria - and all they need is a net."

"I thought, ‘That's a column,'" he said. "Sports is nothing but nets - basketball nets, tennis nets, soccer nets, lacrosse nets, jumping the net, cutting down nets, the New Jersey Nets, girls in fishnets, whatever ..."

Before asking his readers to donate $10 or $20, he searched for an agency to collect the money and buy the nets. He found the UN Foundation, which was started in 1998 by Ted Turner. Although it was already sponsoring another campaign, ‘Malaria No More', it agreed to his request that a new group be started with the name ‘Nothing But Nets'. "That's a real title," Reilly said. "It's so simple that even sports fans can get it."

The foundation put a donation form on its website and promised to cover all administrative costs. Within a few days, $1.6 million had flowed in. Soon after, Major League Soccer and the National Basketball Association became sponsors. Players like Diego Gutierrez of the Chicago Fire and DeSagana Diop of the New Jersey Nets, who is from Senegal, helped raise money and travelled to Africa to hand out nets The United Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church and the Union for Reform Judaism also joined the effort, as did corporate sponsors like Orkin Pest Control and Makita tools.

The two Protestant churches pledged to raise up to $100 million each. They organise youth basketball tournaments and ask for money from their own adherents. For example, Bishop Bickerton said, at the Methodist genera conference in April, a basketball signed by all the church's bishops was auctioned off for $430,000.

But most of the contributions have been modest, raised by students. Yoni DP Rechtman, a seventh grader on the undefeated middle-schoo team at St Ann's School in Brooklyn, organised a 3-on-3 basketball tournament as part of hi "mitzvah project," the tradition of raising money for a good cause before one's bar mitzvah Unfortunately, he said, it rained that day; but the nine players who showed up anyway had family pledges totaling $1,900. At Howard University in Washington, Ololade Ajayi helped organise the African Student Association fashion show to raise $2,300. She had a personal interest, she said, because she caught malaria several time growing up in Nigeria and lost a friend to it "We had to take our own nets to boarding school," she said. "There were stagnant wate pools on the school grounds. If your net got hole in it, you'd be bitten."

But the champion for her age and weight clas is undoubtedly Katherine Commale of Hopewell Pennsylvania, who has just turned seven and ha raised $43,000. Her mother, Lynda Commale said it started in April 2006 when she wa watching television while the family slept and learned from a PBS documentary that a child died of malaria every 30 seconds.

"I couldn't sleep," Commale said. "The nex morning, the kids said, ‘Mom, what's wrong with you?' I told them - and Katherine was just five and she started counting on her fingers. She go to 30, and she looked horrified. And she said ‘Mommy, we have to do something.'"

With her three-year-old brother, Katherine built a diorama from a pizza box and some Barbie dolls to represent an African family in a hut. Then, with a piece of tulle and a toy bug, she developed a short skit showing how nets protec sleeping children. "She tucks it in, she says ‘You're safe now,'" Commale said. "Kids get thi in like 90 seconds." Soon, she and Katherine made a presentation at their church and raised $2,000, and they have continued visiting churches. Katherine and her friends also hand decorate gift cards that say "A mosquito net has been purchased in you name," raising about $8,000 each Christmas Commale said. Reilly, the writer who started the whole thing, said he had an idea for a new angle that would depend on one celebrity's cooperation.

"I know Maria Sharapova a little," he said referring to the blonde tennis star. "I'm going to ask her to donate $1,000 every time someone hits on her and she says no. I'm going to call i Nothing But Nyets."

URL: http://epaper.financialexpress.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=15_06_2008_012_002&typ=1&pub=321