Usman and Charlotte under the net

Early this morning Usman Nawaz and Charlotte Dando, Faiths Act Fellows of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation based here at Malaria No More UK, zoomed out of London marking the start of a road trip with a difference! Usman and Charlotte will spend the next three days travelling from Leicester to Huddersfield, Blackpool to Bradford as they bring their multifaith malaria message to the North of England. Usman and Charlotte are running the Northern leg of the Where’s The Net? campaign; a worldwide relay connecting people of different faiths in an international multifaith initiative to help end malaria, a disease which kills a child every minute. The Where’s The Net? mosquito net, which is currently travelling around the UK, has already covered thousands of miles and been hung by cultural landmarks including the White House, Niagara Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge and London’s Big Ben.

Usman, who is from Rochdale, and Charlotte, who grew up in Huddersfield, were keen to go back to their roots for this campaign. Usman says, “I’ve enjoyed living in London during the Fellowship year but it’s really exciting to bring the multifaith message home to my own community and my local mosque in Rochdale.” Charlotte says, “In nearly a year of working together as partner Fellows, Usman and I have never had any major disagreements. But can we survive three days of frantic map reading and traffic jams?”

The tour will be launched at St. Philip’s Church, Leicester on Wednesday 30 May in partnership with the Leicester Interfaith Youth Hub. On the same day it will travel to Jamia al Karam, a Muslim boarding school in Retford, and then onto a Hindu Temple and the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Huddersfield. On Thursday 31 May the net will visit Haworth, Blackburn Cathedral, the Blackpool Reform Jewish Congregation Synagogue, the Jamia Chashtia Mosque and neighbouring St. John’s Church in Rochdale. Finally, on Friday 1 June the net will travel to Challenge College in Bradford and will visit the village of Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, birthplace of George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

The Where’s The Net? relay race began on 16 February in Sierra Leone and has visited 15 countries including Nepal, Uganda and the Philippines.

Charlotte and Usman invite you to join them along the route. But even if the net is not travelling near to you, everyone can take part in Where’s The Net? – for every 10 new people who follow the net’s journey on Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s social media threads, Sumitomo Chemical will donate a mosquito net to Malaria No More UK to help prevent malaria. Click here for more information.

Find out more:
Where’s the Net?
Faiths unite to fight malaria