Real Life Stories
ukGracie Connett
When I came downstairs late one night my Mum and Dad were watching Comic Relief on telly. I saw that there were babies with malaria. The babies were just lying there with no mosquito nets. The babies were looking sad and sick and they weren’t really doing anything because they were ill. It made me feel sorry for them and I was upset and worried.
I said to my Mum and Dad ‘I must help those babies’, so I had an idea. I would make flapjacks to sell for 10p each. My plan was to set up a shop outside my house and sell home-made flapjacks. We made them on Saturday afternoon. We used golden syrup and porridge oats and butter and sugar. They tasted fabulous.
On Sunday morning I set up my shop. I called it ‘Gracie’s Incredible Edibles’. I made some signs to tell people that the money was for babies with malaria.
I raised £30 which is enough to buy, deliver and hang six mosquito nets
Lots of people came and bought my flapjacks. I thought I would make enough money to buy one mosquito net but people were very pleased to give more for the babies with malaria than I expected, so I raised £11.97 just from selling flapjacks.
When other people heard about my flapjack sale and the babies with malaria they gave me some extra money and my Mum and Dad topped it up. So I raised £30 which is enough to buy, deliver and hang six mosquito nets. The money will be used to help stop babies and their families in Africa from getting malaria.
More real life stories
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Geoffrey Baines
I just happened to be checking out Twitter one day at the time when a tweet from the author, Seth Godin, appeared encouraging people to buy a couple of copies of the book End Malaria – one to read and one to give away.
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Musa Sanyang
I came from a very poor background from a village in the Gambia. My parents were subsistence farmers, my father planted ground nut during the raining season and my mum, who died about 9 years ago after a complication with malaria, used to work on the rice field during the same period; my family had no other source of income.
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Morwenna Cross
A motor-racing enthusiast, Morwenna opted to join the fight against malaria after seeing David Brabham’s Highcroft Racing car decorated with the Malaria No More logo at the Le Mans race in 2010.
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Dinah Hawes
Dinah decided to join the fight against malaria when she saw a Comic Relief programme on TV about the devastating effects of malaria throughout Africa. She was struck by the fact that just £5 is enough to buy, deliver and hang a mosquito net to protect a mother and child from malaria for up to five years.
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Edward Ahima Botwe
Dad-of-six Edward knows all about the dangers of malaria having seen each of his children suffer from the disease in recent years.
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Bonafactious and Valencia Oroses
Parents Bonafactious and Valencia live with their family in rural Namibia. Their home is in an isolated part of the country meaning they are officially some of the ‘hardest to reach’ communities with little access to malaria prevention and treatment support.
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Talata Mohammed
Working mum Talata Mohammed lives in central Ghana’s Ashanti region with her family including three adults and four children ages one, two, five and 10. Talata is a farmer and earns her living from crops she grows and sells locally.
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Shoshana Court
In January, when I came to Sekondi/Takoradi on the West Coast of Ghana, I was so excited!
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Mamas Otsieditse and Amos
If you are a volunteer health worker in Botswana, you’re also a life saver. ‘Mamas’ Otsieditse and Amos volunteer in their local community to raise vital awareness about the life threatening dangers of malaria and how to prevent it.
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Adrian Siebo – Enrolled Nurse, Lisikili Clinic, Namibia
Adrian, 24, is currently the only nurse at Lisikili Primary Health Clinic in Kabbe Constituency, Caprivim. There should be two nurses at the clinic but one of the posts is vacant. Annemarie Meyer, our Programme and Policy Manager, met Adrian at his clean, neat clinic in October 2011, after he had finished with the 40 or so patients he had seen that day
