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Students Against Malaria Strive To Spread Awareness

“There’s a huge issue of collaborating between the global health groups,” Brooks said. “We would be doing something related to Ebola, and there would be another group doing a similar event, and we didn’t know that other groups were doing it.”

AN IMPERSONAL PROBLEM

On World Malaria Day 2014, Dominic Akandwanaho ’16 wrote an op-ed for the Crimson, entitled “Of Moses, Me, and Malaria,” expressing his frustration as someone who had personally been affected by malaria with the lack of awareness and concern from Harvard students.

“Even at institutions like Harvard, which pride themselves on the curiosity and worldliness of their students, many people ignore this problem,” he wrote.

Tiana J. Raphel ’16, a co-founder of SAM, acknowledged this lack of awareness on campus, including her own misunderstandings of malaria before founding SAM.

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“I had the misconception that it had already been addressed, that it wasn’t a big problem anymore. I don’t know where I got that from,” Raphel said. “It’s a challenging process to kind of show people why something is important when they don’t see it upfront.”

School of Public Health professor and Director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative Wirth echoed the sentiment that Harvard students can view malaria as a far-off problem that does not personally affect them.

“Because it doesn’t affect the population, [and] for many students here, they’ve never known anyone that had malaria, so for them, it’s not a personal issue,” Wirth said. “I think caring about something requires that you have some kind of connection...a knowledge-connection is important.”

For her part, Carmen Mejia, executive director of Defeating Malaria, said many students fail to realize what they can contribute to the eradication of malaria.

“We have a lot of really talented people within Harvard, but sometimes people get a little too focused or a little too intimidated by a problem. ‘Oh no, no no, but I’m a programmer, I’m interested in poly-sci, or I’m a historian...I have nothing to contribute.’ But that’s really wrong,” Mejia said.

ARMED WITH UNIVERSITY SUPPORT

Unlike some College global health organizations that largely acquire funding from the Undergraduate Council, SAM receives financial support from Defeating Malaria, uniquely positioning it to achieve its goal of student malaria awareness.

According to Toure, Defeating Malaria granted SAM an initial $1,200 in seed funding and another $1,200 to sponsor the “Harvard One Campaign” glowsticks event. The assistance from Defeating Malaria “was something to work with and it was very helpful,” Toure said. He added that Castro serves as their faculty adviser and plays a consultative role, meeting with them as needed.

Members of both Team HBV at Harvard and Global Health and AIDS Coalition, two student-run organizations specifically devoted to a topic in global health, said that they mainly rely on funding from the Undergraduate Council for their events.

“GHAC does not receive any funding from Harvard on an ongoing basis...A lot of what we do is travel for actions and meetings with legislators, for which we have yet to receive funding from the OSL despite applying for travel grants,” said Maria L. Smith ’16, a member of GHAC. “From our vantage point, it seems as though Harvard is more dedicated to funding pizza and chips than to supporting students who are engaged in activism.”

For its part, the Harvard Forum for International Development student group does not receive funding from University-affiliated departments or faculty outside of UC grants, according to Waverley Y. He ’18, HFID’s external relations chair.

“We are currently working on getting grants from the Public Service Network affiliated with PBHA [Phillips Brooks House Association] but have not yet received any support,” He said.

In the end, SAM, in partnership with Defeating Malaria, aims to encourage students to view malaria as a broader problem than just a focus in one specific field like biology.

“When you’re trying to do something like eliminate a disease, then civil society has to play a very important role,” Wirth said.

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