Youngchurch
Taking a bite out of malaria T
yler Moore saw a two-minute video on malaria from the ELCA and knew what to do. “I’ve been wondering what to do with my money. Now I know,” the kinder- gartner told his teacher at Ascension Lutheran School, Thousand Oaks, Calif. “I am going to give it to chapel to buy nets and save people.” The next day, Tyler brought his piggy bank to the school office and donated its contents. Tyler and other students raised $2,200 (including a $1,500 matching grant from Thri- vent Financial for Lutherans) for the ELCA Malaria Campaign (www.
elca.org/malaria). “The kids were caught up in that excitement of being able to create change,” said Susanne Maliski, the teacher who spearheaded the school’s drive.
Once the student council adopted the project and designated the trimes- ter chapel offerings to it, things began to happen.
Classes were decorated with mosquito nets as a “visual,” a vivid reminder that even the smallest among us can help save lives, Mal- iski said. Teachers in each classroom explained the project, and a skit for kindergartners through fourth-graders illustrated the impact of malaria. The teachers followed up by reading to students Little Things Make Big Dif- ferences from Lutheran World Relief (
www.lwr.org/malaria).
Send stories of your youth group (pre- school-confirmation age) to: Andrea Pohlmann Kulik , 8765 W. Higgins Rd., Chicago IL 60631; andrea.pohlmann@
thelutheran.org.
During chapel, students viewed the ELCA video about malaria, learning how it kills nearly 1 million people each year, 85 percent of whom are infants and children under age 5.
40 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Silje Squires and Tyler Moore
embrace the sixth of the ELCA’s Millennium Development Goals.
With their donations, Ascension Lutheran School, Thousand Oaks, Calif., helps
combat the spread of malaria.
“We kept empha- sizing to the kids that there is only one way to get malaria and it is treatable,” Maliski said. “We focused on preventable and treatable.”
That message was brought home when the youth played “Malaria Dodge- ball.” Players hit by the ball—in this case called a “mosquito”—had to visit the team doctor. One doctor was rich with medical supplies and money to help treat patients; the other was poor, without resources to help the sick. The youth learned how medicine and nets could make a huge difference in the battle against malaria. Offerings from one chapel went to purchase bed nets, while another went
toward anti-malarial medications. “The money was literally falling out of the [offering] plate,” Maliski said. “It was really something to see.” A chunk of that money came from Silje Squires, 8. Her grandfather, Karsten Lundring, managing partner for a Thrivent office in Woodland Hills, Calif., gave her and his other grandchildren money to buy something for Christmas that would benefit someone else. Silje didn’t know what to do with her money until the malaria campaign came along. She quickly became capti- vated by the idea of protecting people from bites with mosquito nets. “I want to donate my Christmas money to this,” she said. That was the beauty of the campaign, Maliski said. Children felt empow- ered to change something, they sacrificed to do it and they now have the sense that they made a difference. “It didn’t end,” she said of the campaign. “Our effort ended … but this will be an emphasis next year in a different way. I think [the students] now have the foundation of knowledge—and of compassion.” M
Susanne Hopkins Hopkins is director of lay ministry/pastoral care of Ascension Lutheran Church, Thousand Oaks, Calif.
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