The following is a guest post from Justin Libaw, a former Malaria No More intern:

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to meet a group of kids not quite half my age, but easily doubly as dedicated and driven as I was when I was in their shoes. These seventh and eighth grade students at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California participated in Project Give, a yearlong school project allowing them to learn about issues of global significance and to work to bring the world closer to addressing pressing needs.

Project Give adopted the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as a guide for the students’ efforts and a group of five students chose to focus their attention on the problem of malaria. These students spent many months learning about the disease and about the efforts of Malaria No More to address its impact. They prepared a presentation to share with their peers and they donated $700 to provide mosquito nets for children in Africa!

At the celebration of their Project Give accomplishments, these five students discussed what this project had meant to them, expressing the importance of doing good for others and how a simple $10 mosquito net could save lives. As we left the event, my friends and I remarked on how impressed we were with the impact these middle schoolers from Eastside had made and on how we were confident that their efforts would extend well beyond that night.

Justin Libaw is a member of Initiative Against Malaria (I-AM), a Stanford University student group working to engage college students in the fight against malaria. Learn more at http://malaria.stanford.edu.

The Malaria Elimination Group (MEG) has released two new publications, Shrinking the Malaria Map: A Prospectus on Malaria Elimination, and a Guide on Malaria Elimination for Policy Makers. The Prospectus provides a road map on the operational, technical and financial considerations for those working on the front lines of malaria control and elimination, while the Guide is a policy digest of the Prospectus, intended for leaders and policy makers.

A global body of researchers, policy experts and country program managers, the Malaria Elimination Group, convened by the UCSF Global Health Group, provides intellectual and practical guidance to countries along the natural global margins of the disease that have chosen to pursue elimination. 

Ray Chambers, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Malaria remarked, “The Malaria Elimination Group has made a valuable contribution at a crucial moment, by providing countries, policy makers and investors the information they need to make informed decisions about investment in malaria elimination.”

Download the free publications, and read more about the Malaria Elimination Group at www.malariaeliminationgroup.org.

World Malaria Day 2009 was a huge success! Here’s what happened:

Thanks to Ashton Kutcher and Twitter, Malaria No More raised awareness and rallied millions of people to support the fight against malaria. This  great video shows the story arc of the Twitter phenomenon and how people around the world are helping end malaria deaths.

MNM participated in the BritWeek Gala in Los Angeles, with former Prime Minister Tony Blair as the guest speaker.

FC Barcelona raised awareness for World Malaria Day at their match against Seville FC (which they won!)

Malaria No More and partners honored Congressional Malaria Champions on Capitol Hill, along with the UK’s Sarah Brown and film star Forest Whitaker.

The One World Against Malaria summit in Washington, DC brought together faith leaders from Africa and the U.S. and helped MNM launch a number of new faith-based initiatives.

MNM’s global affiliates made a big splash in the UK, Canada and the Netherlands!

In addition, Malaria No More was featured in several news stories and the malaria community made a number of new announcements to help focus the world’s attention on how we are fighting-and winning-the battle against malaria.

Malaria No More’s goal is to provide malaria control tools for everyone at risk in Africa by the end of 2010. That’s 611 days away…let’s get to work!

Malaria No More partner MACEPA* has joined the blogosphere!

MACEPA commemorated World Malaria Day with a host of events in Kombolcha town, Ethiopia; Katete, Zambia; and Mtwara, Tanzania—and kept track of them all on their World Malaria Day diary.

The MACEPA team took the opportunity to celebrate major accomplishments in Zambia in the last year—malaria dropped from the first to the sixth cause of all outpatient hospital visits, and reported deaths attributed to malaria were reduced by 66 percent in Zambia.

“Pamodzi, the Nyanja word for “together,” is a word with special significance in Zambia and particular importance to the fight against malaria,” writes MACEPA’s communications officer on World Malaria Day. The team emphasized, “Countries together need to consolidate their experience, lessons learned, and commitments to neighbors in order to see real progress on the scale of these global expectations.”

Check out their blog and find out more about MACEPA in the field!

Since 2005, MACEPA has been working with Roll Back Malaria and the Government of Zambia to provide comprehensive malaria control interventions to all African communities. Read here about MACEPA’s on-the-ground efforts against malaria in Africa.

Blog on, MACEPA!

*Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa

Malaria No More was featured prominently in the news around World Malaria Day. See below for some of the highlights:

• MNM Chairman Peter Chernin wrote “Target: Malaria”, an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal , showing the enormous economic benefit to ending malaria deaths in Africa and return-on-investment opportunity.
• MNM’s Kate Campana and NetGuarantee were featured in a special supplement on malaria in The Financial Times, in an article about innovative finance mechanisms. 
• MNM CEO Scott Case wrote an article for CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s website. “Twittering for a Good Cause” was featured on AC360.com and Cooper urged CNN viewers to go online and read the article.
• MNM Policy Center Managing Director Mark Green appeared on The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, then to further raise awareness for World Malaria Day and Malaria No More on the morning show, Fox & Friends. 
• MNM Vice Chairman John Bridgeland co-authored an op-ed on interfaith efforts to fight malaria with Jean Duff of the Center for Interfaith Action.
• The BritWeek Gala dinner, benefitting Malaria No More, generated media coverage including a feature article in The Los Angeles Times. 
• Malaria No More’s partnership with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and the Interfaith Youth Core’s Faiths Act Fellows program was featured in an article in The Washington Post. 
• Malaria No More worked with World Vision Report, a nationally-syndicated radio program, on “Malaria 2009: Countdown to Eradication”.

MNM up on the jumbotron at the FCB game

During its match against Sevilla on April 22nd, FC Barcelona took the field with a duel mission…beat Sevilla FC and  raise awareness for the fight against malaria and World Malaria Day. The team accomplished both tasks in fine form, educating the 76,000 supporters at the match and a substantial television viewership about malaria, while orchestrating a spectacular 4-0 victory!

As a representative of Malaria No More and a FC Barcelona supporter I was left to have my cake and eat it too as I watched the team take the field in “More Than A Club”t-shirts, including FC Barcelona and Malaria No More logos, in a gesture of support for ending deaths from the preventable and treatable disease. In addition to the shirts, the official game program and the stadium’s large screens both carried messaging about malaria awareness and how every individual can help. FC Barcelona also took the opportunity to role out the red carpet for the winner of last year’s charity tournament in New York City that helped launch the More Than A Club partnership, Chris Schoenfield and his guest, Nate Houghteling. The two were awed by the experience and grateful for the team’s commitment to fighting malaria.

The team also took the opportunity to enlist the help of their three star West African players- Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon), Seydou Keita (Mali), and Yaya Toure (Ivory Coast) who all filmed key educational messages in their native French, that will be used to encourage their countrymen to utilize mosquito nets.

Learn more about the April 22nd game and how FC Barcelona helped to raise awareness about malaria here.

MNM was scattered across the globe for World Malaria Day, but John was the luckiest—hopping a last-minute flight to Barcelona to watch the game.

On April 25th the Twitter community came together to get the word out about World Malaria Day. We are honored and inspired by you all. Here is a special note of thanks from all of us.

The support for World Malaria Day on Twitter is outstanding! Thanks to everyone for keeping the spotlight on malaria and showing how every individual can help save a life.

Be sure to check out a video on the Twitter Blog that shows the whole story arc of this phenomenal adventure, starting when @aplusk challenged CNN to a race to a million followers—and malaria emerged as the victor!

So far, Ashton Kutcher, CNN and others have pledged over 65,000 nets to the fight against malaria. And individual Tweeters have donated almost 6,000 mosquito nets through malarianomore.org.

Keep up the great work, keep tweeting and follow @malarianomore to keep up with the latest news!

Canada’s Spread the Net marks World Malaria Day on April 25th with the exciting announcement that Jim Brennan, captain of the Toronto FC, has joined the campaign as the newest ambassador and the latest prominent Canadian working to save lives and eradicate malaria.

Spread the Net and Malaria No More Canada are both initiatives of The Belinda Stronach Foundation.

“The global campaign to fight the disease is growing,” said Belinda Stronach, chair of Malaria No More Canada. “It’s up to us to do our part. When something as simple and inexpensive as a $10 bed net can save lives, we can’t afford not to be part of the solution.”

Check out more about fighting malaria north of the border at www.malarianomore.ca.

The fight against malaria is picking up steam and really breaking through in the news today. Take a look below for a round-up of some of the major announcement to come out this week in support of the global effort to end malaria deaths:

President Barack Obama made a statement in support of World Malaria Day and recommited the U.S. as a leader in ending deaths from malaria by 2015.

British PM Gordon Brown noted progress on the UK’s promise to deliver 20 million mosquito nets for Africa by the end of 2010.

UNICEF released a report indicating major signs of progress across Africa in the fight against malaria, especially in the increase in distribution of insecticide-treated nets.

The World Health Organization announced that Zambia has reduced malaria deaths by 66%.

The President’s Malaria Initiative released its third annual report, reporting on progress in the United States’ battle to end malaria deaths.

Secretary of State Clinton remarked on the significant achievements made in the growing global effort to combat malaria in a State Department video message.

The Roll Back Malaria Partnership reminded the community, “We have but twenty months to achieve the collective target of universal coverage of malaria control interventions by 2010″ in a formal statement.

The Organization of Islamic Conference signaled its commitment to working with international and public-private partnerships to end malaria deaths. 

The World Bank announced today that it will provide an additional $300 million in International Development Association (IDA) funding to expand Nigeria’s efforts to control malaria.

Exxon Mobil Corporation pledged $1 million to the President’s Malaria Initiative to fight malaria in Africa.

…And in addition to a broad media presence, the Financial Times published a special, 12-article malaria supplement in today’s paper, outlining the important work being done to fight malaria.