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July 6, 2007

The Project; GMin in a Flash

This project is an unconventional one. From the people involved to our fundraising mechanisms, it has been a learning process for me and I hope it could also be worthwhile to you. I will briefly walk through its conception, how we fundraised, our partners and then I will end with a brief bio of the other people directly involved and I will intermittently acknowledge certain people who continue to provide support along the way.

Whilst in high school in Norway, my roommate Jacob Lennheden and I started a group called Global Minimum (GMin) in 2006. It started out in our bedroom and last summer we got his friend Morten Klein Holst who is a web designer who owns his own business quite interested and as you have rightly guessed, his first job was to make our website (www.gmin.org). After an incredibly dull year in which all we did was recruit a few more people on board in addition to donating furniture and stationery to all pupils and teachers at primary school named Livingway Preparatory in Freetown, we have been able to officially launch GMin as a registered NGO in Denmark in the period leading up to this summer.

GMin is fundamentally based on the concept that everyone can do something really small to make a difference in a small community in a way people do not usually think of. If everyday, we reduced the number of illiterate people around the world, the number of deaths from preventable diseases (like malaria), unit by unit, one person to another, we would aim for a Global Minimum in all negative things and our cumulative efforts could be as powerful as a single huge project which might never reach beyond the start line. We wanted to keep the momentum going and so we frequently held Skype meetings online, and Internet Chat rooms open for brainstorming. It was in one of these brainstorming sessions that Jacob, Morten and I decided that GMin should have a project related to malaria. Why malaria?

Last summer, I was in my village in Sahn Malen. I was born in Bo Town but given that my dad hails from that village, I also feel a part of its history and have it as mine. I had never been since I was a baby, mainly because a civil war broke out that sent everyone away from villages. I traveled all by myself and after a horrendous trip, I developed a sore back from the inconceivably bad road conditions. My dad's brother introduced me to all the people in the village who related to me in every way and I must say, I was overwhelmed at the end of the tour and I felt like I had met the whole village. The charm, insight and friendliness that everyone carried when talking to me was something I had missed for two years while I studied in Europe. But the real magic – even Magic Johnson could not think of what was yet to arrive.

After a great meal and a long talk it was time to go to bed. My uncle then took me to his room in the village, showed me his bed which had a mosquito net over it, and left with his wife to sleep in a room that had no net. What? I could not imagine their generosity and in my slumber - away from mosquito bites - one thing was sure: my next GMin project was going to be malaria-related and what better place to begin than a community that valued friendship and health.

I applied to the Kathryn Wasserman Davis - 100 Projects for Peace but my project was not one of those selected. It wouldn't have been, since about half of the initial amount was to be for transportation. We knew that for the GMin project to come to fruition, we would have to resolve to other fundraising approaches and we should keep writing for more Grants. Jacob's mother, Ann-Marie, carelessly landed on the GMin website and she kept on reading. She fell in love with our proposed idea but to me she had an even greater idea.

For her 50th birthday celebrations, she sent out a note to all invited guests instructing them to redirect any gifts they may have so generously thought of towards the GMin project. She set up an account and at the end of the day, we received over $1000 in cash from her incredible consideration. The GMin team in Denmark gave a presentation to all the invited guests and all I could do from Boston was to send them a video in which I thanked them a million times, otherwise, tusen takk in Norwegian. Great step but that was way too short for what our plan was.

The plan itself in summary is based on the idea that if the government and other agencies like UNICEF and Red Cross really wanted to decrease the prevalence of malaria in the developing world or in our case, Sierra Leone, we had to use a different approach in addition to the current approach which was to offer Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) to vulnerable groups (under fives and pregnant women). However, these vulnerable groups only spend about eight hours under these nets - when they do, and they also spend an almost equal amount of time interacting with the larger unprotected family members. During the evening hours, these groups with ITNs could still have malaria and there would be no outright positive effect on malaria prevalence. Knowing that the protective effect of the ITNs is cumulative, what could possibly happen if we protected the whole home, the whole community, a whole village? Apart from procuring and distributing these ITNs blindly, could we also design ways by which we can better the dismal 20% - 50% use of ITNs by those who own one?

To answer all the above questions and a million more, we identified Sahn Malen, a village of about 700 inhabitants as a pilot investigation. With $1000, we desperately needed more money. I then contacted a third Danish friend of mine. We were classmates in Norway and he took a gap year to work in a refugee camp for Western Sahara. Since he wanted to do more work, I obliviously invited him to join the project. He said yes and like most random discussions, I never paid much attention and just concluded that he was been quite polite by accepting my invitation. Well I was wrong and as I write this blog, I stop back to ponder that moment because it was a major turning point for us.

Mathias Esmann has now become a very active GMin member and he played a great role to say the least in getting us an NGO status in Denmark. Mathias turned 18 years a while ago and his parents promised him a driver's license. This would not make much sense to me until I learned that one of such licenses in Denmark cost about $2000. He suggested to his parents that since he was going to school in the USA, at Princeton, he would not need a license in the near future and he requested that his parents diverted the money towards our project. That increased our funds to over $3000 and it had taken two moments of magic for this to happen. This was a a bit different from the one Johnson used back then.

Finally, I rewrote my Grant application, and asked Jacob to submit it at a competition held at my former school. It was called "Competition of Benevolence" and there were $1700 available for students who wanted to carry out a project of whatever scale. After hard work and unbelievable presentation from Jacob, we got to the last four and as I wrote my mid-terms here in Harvard, my mind was set on Jacob as I imagined him making the presentation that got us more funds. We had enough money to procure 600 ITNs, including shipping to bring to Sahn Malen where we will ensure that every one, everyone received an ITN. We all got jobs that would pay for our tickets to SL and I benefited greatly from Fellowships from the Career Office at Harvard. The project was more than a dream now and that trance I was in a year ago when my uncle left his bed with a net to me was fast becoming a reality.

With the money in place, we contacted UNICEF about possibly securing the ITNs on our behalf after it appeared that it would be difficult to strike a deal in time with the contact suggested to us by Roll Back Malaria - WHO. We contacted the Chief Planning Officer, who then directed us to the head of the Health Unit at UNICEF. After a series of correspondences, we got the District Health Officer from the Pujehun district involved and we were able to add about 700 more ITNs to the district quota for our own use. I also got in contact with the Chief of the village who informed his township about the proposed project. All the parties involved have been very enthusiastic to this stage and we all await the fruit of the project. We will keep on waiting for the next three years.