Helping others

Dear editor:

This may fall upon deaf ears, yet as a concerned high school student and person I feel that even though our community has done its fair share to help those around us, we must hear of the plight of those less fortunate than us.

We all have seen the pictures of the little anemic children in Africa with no food. We've heard the horror stories of those who died in Rwanda in the '90's and those dying in Darfur right now. We've read the statistics of those with AIDS and how dire the situation is. Considering that, there are many problems that face these people that we haven't even thought of.

As a member of the Nevada Speech and Debate squad I've done a lot of research. Over the past three years I've researched topics like the War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Israel and Palestine, China, a potential nuclear war, Korea, and intelligent design. [Just to name a few] But I have never been more moved by what I read than that of what happened to me this past summer.

This past summer I spent three weeks living at the University of Kansas to prepare for this year's topic which concerned Africa and public health services. I would spend my mornings walking across the universityes campus to Anschutz Library to do research. As time passed at the camp, we began to practice debate each other, and used the articles we had found as tools, and didn't stop to think of what anything really said.

The more and more I read, the more it moved me. Day after day I read evidence of women being beaten, children starving, and the bird flu. But the things that startled me the most is that every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria in Africa, and that 1.5 million Africans die per year, of the same horrid disease.

Following my stay at the University of Kansas, I searched for ways to help solve this problem, and that brought me to the solution of bed nets. The cost of a bed net is $10. The bed net is one of the only ways to prevent mosquitoes, the primary carrier of malaria, from biting a person in the night.

One program that has spearheaded the fight against this terrible disease is the Nothing But Nets campaign.

The goal of the organization is to raise as many nets as possible. The greatest supporter of the campaign is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will match anything that Nothing But Nets raises. So in buying one net, you're actually donating two. Here in Nevada, you can make a secure on-line donation to the Nevada Buzzkill Team at www.umcn.info/nets/ or by check (marked nets) to the United Methodist Church at 500 S. College.

All donations are tax deductible.

Taylor Edmonds

Nevada