We’ve recently been nominated for a ThinkSocial Award for our efforts around the Twitter Challenge with Ashton (@aplusk) leading up to World Malaria Day – remember that?!

Public voting opened yesterday and we’re quickly climbing the ranks to victory – and we need your help to ensure we get there! To show your support, visit our page on ThinkSocial and cast your vote. You can sign in through your email, Twitter handle, Facebook and MySpace accounts.

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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!

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!

The White House has just released the following statement from President Obama on the occasion of World Malaria Day:

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON WORLD MALARIA DAY

The United States stands with our global partners and people around the world to reaffirm our commitment to make the U.S. a leader in ending deaths from malaria by 2015.

This begins with ending malaria as a major public health threat in Africa, where it kills nearly one million people each year, and overwhelms public health systems. It is time to redouble our efforts to rid the world of a disease that does not have to take lives.

Together, we have made great strides in addressing this preventable and treatable disease. Across Africa, children and their families are sleeping under bed nets; local groups are working with pregnant women and mothers so that anti-malarial drugs are available for them and for their sick children. In schools and villages, community centers and places of worship, clinics and hospitals, optimism is growing that we can and we will succeed in our ambitious goals.

Together, we can build on this progress against malaria and address a broad range of global health threats by investing in health systems, and continuing our work with partners to deliver highly effective prevention and treatment measures.

In Africa, where the disease burden is the greatest, many countries are making dramatic gains in reducing the terrible burden of malaria, particularly for the benefit of those most vulnerable, so that malaria is no longer an intractable fact of life. Today, I recommit to work with our partners in this fight.

Find out how the Malaria Policy Center is working with the White House to help achieve this goal.

Elliott on the big screen at Nationals Stadium

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!

The Exxon Mobil Corporation announced today that it is giving a $1 million grant to support the President’s Malaria Initiative in honor of World Malaria Day. The grant will support vital training for health-care workers in malaria prevention and treatment, with a focus on those most vulnerable to malaria—pregnant women and young children.

ExxonMobil is a vital partner in the fight against malaria. ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex W. Tillerson is co-chair of the Malaria Capital Campaign, an initiative from Malaria No More and the Global Business Coalition to raise resources and leverage best business practices from the private sector. ExxonMobil shows how core competencies and expertise are used to tackle a deadly disease for maximum impact: saving lives.

ExxonMobil has created a special website for World Malaria Day, including video and podcasts of global experts talking about the role business can play in combating the disease. In addition, they are placing malaria awareness ads on television and radio to really help get the message out!

To top it off, Exxon helped American Idol alum Elliott Yamin raise awareness at the DC Nationals game on Tuesday night, highlighting his trip to Angola to raise funds for Malaria No More and get the crowd excited for World Malaria Day!

ExxonMobil’s Africa Health Initiative has committed a total of $55 million so far to programs to fight malaria.

Twitter Nation, you guys are amazing! This has been an incredible couple of days—all thanks to you, Ashton and everyone who has helped raise awareness by leveraging your voices through Twitter.

Here’s my personal thank you to all of you for your efforts (pardon the cheesy hotel room decor)! Let’s keep an eye toward World Malaria Day on April 25th…keep tweeting, keep raising awareness and keep saving lives!!

Best,
Scott

Follow us on Twitter @malarianomore and find out what else you can do to make your voice heard!

Anderson Cooper 360 mentions Malaria No More CEO Scott Case tonight and tells viewers to read his blog on Anderson’s site. PLUS Anderson tweeted about Scott’s post to get the word out!

You can also read his blog here:

Twittering For A Good Cause
Malaria No More CEO, Scott Case

This week, the world discovered a new and powerful weapon in the fight against malaria: Twitter. The social networking and micro-blogging tool mobilized a million people to battle the disease by helping Ashton Kutcher be the first to reach one million Twitter followers—saving lives, 140 characters at a time.

Earlier this month, Ashton decided to help raise awareness about malaria for World Malaria Day on April 25th. To do so, he leveraged his popularity on Twitter to spread the word and encourage his followers to donate $10 mosquito nets at www.MalariaNoMore.org. This simple act (or “tweet”) brought a message of malaria awareness to a new audience in an innovative way and galvanized hundreds of thousands of people to take action.

Innovation like this is exactly what’s needed to end malaria deaths. When Ashton challenged CNN in a race to a million Twitter followers, he added a twist: 10,000 mosquito nets for Malaria No More to help families protect their children in Africa if he reached the target first. CNN quickly accepted the challenge and pledged 10,000 nets if they could beat Ashton to the magic number.

The gauntlet was thrown and the race was on. But the fight to end malaria deaths had already scored a major victory.

As a technologist, I’m always looking for the next big thing in new media and breakthrough communications. Twitter is a phenomenal tool—but this is the first time I’ve seen it used in such a powerful way. With this race, Ashton not only showed the power of new media, he also launched what may be the biggest technology-driven, pro-social movement in history.

Every individual who participated in the Twitter race played a vital role in moving the world toward one in which no child dies of malaria. To make a difference, Twitter followers didn’t need to make a large donation or a grand gesture. The race to a million showed that the power of dedicated individuals united behind a common cause can spark a movement. Every Twitterer involved—regardless of whether they followed Ashton or CNN—took a simple action that will have outsized impact in the lives of families across Africa.

Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease that kills a child in Africa every 30 seconds—but we know how to stop it. Thanks to new tools, resources and political commitment across the globe, we are winning the fight against malaria. Public engagement shows our leaders that we are determined to beat malaria. Ashton and CNN’s Twitter race shows how we can catalyze technology and innovation to tackle a social problem and make real and lasting change.

We’re working to end malaria deaths by 2015—we can do it, but we need everyone’s help. Every tweet helps, every mosquito net helps, every person has the power to help save lives. Join the world in the race to end malaria deaths by getting creative and using the tools at your fingertips. Visit www.MalariaNoMore.org or use the power of Twitter, MySpace and YouTube to amplify your voice and inspire others.

Ashton set an ambitious goal of reaching a million Twitter followers this week. Inspired by his success, we’re setting an ambitious target of our own: help us get to one million mosquito nets in one week to celebrate World Malaria Day on April 25th.

As Ashton proved today, anything’s possible.

Follow @malarianomore on Twitter

Whew! The Twitterverse has been exploding with malaria (not in a bad way) and many people have pledged to donate mosquito nets to fight malaria in Africa. That includes hundreds of tweets commiting to a single net donation to Malaria No More (thank you!!) and some very generous pledges from others.

Take a look below for a quick synopsis of what’s been going on:

• Ashton Kutcher—he who started all this excitement—and his wife Demi Moore pledged 10,000 nets to Malaria No More. Ashton threw down with this online video challenge to CNN.
• CNN took up the challenge and pledged to match Ashton’s gift of 10,000 nets
• Oprah joined the action with one of her first Tweets in a message to Demi: “@mrskutcher count me in for 20 thousand nets”
• Ryan Seacrest made his mark on Twitter: “just spoke to larry king @CNNbrk is donating 10,000 mosquito nets. i will too”
• Electronic Arts sweetened the deal by promising 5,000 mosquito nets in the name of the person who put Ashton over the million mark

Incredible! And who knows how much further we can go? Make your mark by raising awareness on Twitter for World Malaria Day and April 25th! Thanks for your support!

Super-star and super-Tweeter Ashton Kutcher is “tweeting” his heart out for World Malaria Day!

Ashton is rallying his Twitter followers—almost a million strong!—to use the networking platform to raise awareness about malaria and raise funds for life-saving bed nets. He’s already working to get everyone excited about World Malaria Day and do what they can to get the word out, tweet by tweet!

His first malaria-tweet, sent out on April 6, got hundreds of “re-tweets” and put malaria on the Twitter community’s radar. This is a great start for World Malaria Day.

In the latest news, the online community is abuzz with Ashton’s competition with CNN to see who can be the first to attract 1 million followers on Twitter.  Kutcher, the #3 top influencer on Twitter, has over 890,000 followers to date while the entire CNN network is up to 940,000.

To make the competition even more interesting—and life-saving—Ashton has vowed to donate 10,000 mosquito bed-nets to at-risk families in Africa on World Malaria Day if he wins the race by April 25. (He’ll also ding-dong-ditch CNN founder Ted Turner’s house in Atlanta!)

Whatever your motivation for helping Ashton reach his goal, follow him on Twitter and help show that one person’s voice (or tweet) can be as powerful as a network giant, and one tweet can help save hundreds of lives!