By: Mike Morris
The student government at Loyalist College has started a campaign to raise money to purchase mosquito nets for people in Africa.
Students are planning to raise money through the Spread The Net Campaign. The campaign is an effort made to prevent further malaria infections in Africa.
“It’s very bad,” Christopher Barnim said, describing malaria. “It’s a horrible disease that affects many families over in Africa, so what we’re doing is we’re raising money for the mosquito nets, for the beds, to protect the families.”
Barnim, president of student government, said this is a serious problem.
Barnim himself has not been personally affected by malaria, but he understands the severity of the disease. Loyalist students should care about the plight of malaria victims in Africa, said Barnim.
“It’s a bad disease, so having nets to protect the family is just great. So we’re sending over as many as we can to protect as many people as we can.”
Barnim said the student government has two methods of raising enough money to send the nets to Africa.
“Coming up we’re having our sale of our “I Love Shark Tank” t-shirts, and the proceeds from those will go towards the Spread The Net Campaign,” said Barnim. “As well as our Yuk-Yuks comedy night, the proceeds of that will go to the campaign as well.”
Barnim said the campaign will continue until Feb. 28.
Eric Harmsen, a Loyalist student, said he feels good knowing of their involvement with the campaign. Fellow student Elva Simpson also gave a positive reaction to their involvement.
“I think it’s pretty cool, because it’s important to African children,” said Simpson. “My old high school had a lot of them from Tanzania and stuff like that, so I think it’s important that someone helps them out, it’s good that they do that.”
Another student, Desiree Carl, said, “I guess that’s great.”
Donald Goudreau said that he thought it was good that the Student Government was part of the campaign.
“It’s nice to know we’re trying to help other countries,” Goudreau said.
A number of students other are still unaware of the campaign.