Central Michigan freshmen take on Nothing But Nets!

During the fall 2007 semester, the Honors Program freshman class at Central Michigan University raised nearly $6,000 and counting for malaria prevention in Africa! The philanthropy project was organized by Honors Program Associate Director Judy Idema and graduate student Laura Bantle, instructors of the Introduction to Honors course (HON 100). The Honors freshman class was divided up into a total of 30 small groups. Each group was given a fundraising goal of $200 and had to come up with and execute a quality fund raising project over the course of eight weeks. Almost all groups met the $200 goal and many exceeded the goal.

Group projects included pop bottle drives, organizing children’s carnival games during the CMU Homecoming Parade, sponsoring a date auction, selling ribbons for malaria awareness, and many more! In addition to raising money, the honors freshmen shared malaria prevention information with the donors, educating them about the devastating impact malaria has in Africa. In total, the freshman honors class invested about 1,700 volunteer hours on this project.

“Working with my group on this project was very fulfilling and helped us realize to what extent malaria is a major health issue in the world. It amazed us that we could do so much to help by just collecting pop cans around our communities at home, and around the Mount Pleasant area. We all agreed that if we could go back and redo just one thing it would have been to start collecting pop cans sooner so as to raise more money to help more people. We had fun working together and hope to do so again.”
—Jenna Purcell, Honors Freshman, Central Michigan University