Malaria No More and CollegeHumor: malarious
- Exhibited by
- Sue Kershaw.
- Added
- November 13, 2012
- Medium of Communication
- Online
- Target Audience
- Awareness, individuals
- Type of Charity
- Healthcare
- Country of Origin
- USA
- Date of first appearance
- August, 2012
SOFII’s view
Congratulations to Malaria No More for being brave enough to go with malarious – a fun way to raise money and awareness of a very unfunny disease. For as little as a dollar people can sit back and watch their favourite celebrity do something ridiculous, whilst knowing that they are helping to change the world for hundreds of thousands of poor people.
SOFII loves an organisation that can say:
‘CollegeHumor is thrilled to partner with Malaria No More on this innovative and exciting charity project. That may sound pretty dignified, but rest assured that we are currently eating pizza in our underwear.’
Creator / originator
CollegeHumor and Malaria No More USA.
Summary / objectives
To give people the change to buy a ‘malarious’ video that will go towards providing children with life-saving treatment for malaria.
Background
According to Malaria No More, in 2010 more than 655,000 people were killed by malaria. The majority of those infected are children younger than five and 91 per cent of malaria-related deaths occur in Africa. If drugs are not available, or the parasites that transmit malaria are resistant to them, the infection can lead to coma, life-threatening anaemia and death.
Malaria No More affiliates operate in the Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and USA. They form part of the global Roll Back Malaria Partnership with over 500 other organisations dedicated to a malaria-free world by 2015.
CollegeHumor is well-known for making outrageous and funny videos but this is the first time they have done anything like this, and on this scale, exclusively for a charity. Malaria No More is always looking for new and surprising ways to engage the public, and they’ve found that laughter is a great entry point to learning about this deadly, serious cause. Martin Edlund, chief marketing officer at Malaria No More says, ‘We’re huge fans of CollegeHumor; they share our sense of experimentation and they have hearts as big as their funny bones.’
Special characteristics
During a brainstorming session for a collaborative project at the CollegeHumor offices just over a year ago, Martin Edlund, chief marketing officer at Malaria No More, told CollegeHumor's founders Sam Reich and Ricky Van Veen that a child dies from malaria every 60 seconds. They started speculating about all the ridiculous things that you can do in a minute - and malarious was the outcome.
Merits
A great idea that involves many different people, is funny and innovative and has a definite goal.
Malarious Trailer
