The tallys are in and the Company of MEMPHIS Broadway raised over $100,000 this spring for BC/EFA! Not to be outdone, our NATIONAL TOUR Company raised $41,854!! Hockadooey Doo! Fundraising usually ends right before the Annual Easter Bonnet Presentation which this year took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week, but this week, we have a special organization to support.

Today is Wednesday, yes, but it is also World Malaria Day; an initiative begun by the World Health Initiative in 2007 to help curb the effects of malaria. I had no idea that there was a World Malaria Day, so I started to do some googling. The WHO notes that every year, there are 216 million malaria cases and an estimated resulting 655,000 deaths. From Wikipedia: “Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with 60% of deaths being young children under the age of five.” Nothing But Nets reports that every 60 second, a child dies from malaria. Tough to read those kind of statistics, so what are we doing about it?

Today, MEMPHIS is joining the United Nations Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign and Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids to send life-saving mosquito nets to refugees fleeing violence in South Sudan. Along with LION KING, PORGY AND BESS, GODSPELL, and PRICILLA, MEMPHIS on Broadway will be doing an in-theater donation collection after each of our shows today.

Not in NYC or the Shubert Theatre today? Here is a link if you’d like to donate click here Nothing But Nets

From Nothing But Nets:
“Bed nets work by creating a protective barrier against deadly-malaria carrying mosquitoes that bite at night. A family of four can sleep under an insecticide-treated bed net, safe from malaria, for three years. The benefits of bed nets extend even further than protecting those sleeping underneath them. The insecticide woven into each net makes entire communities safer – killing and repelling mosquitoes so that they can’t go on to bite others who may not be protected by a net. Bed nets can reduce malaria transmissions by 90 percent in areas with high coverage rates.”

So all the mosquito has to do is land on the net and POW! Mosquito no more. It’s pretty rad when you think that one $10 donation buys a bed net that could save a persons life or drastically reduce the risk of infection. That’s two lattes. That’s less than I spent on lunch today. So I donated.

Thanks for the opportunity to tell you about World Malaria Day and how MEMPHIS is participating.

-Carolyn

Carolyn D. Miller is an Associate Producer at Junkyard Dog Productions- Producers of MEMPHIS. After writing this blog, she became a Netvocate.