World Malaria Day 2012 takes place on Wednesday 25 April. On this day JCI UK hopes that chambers all over the UK will use their passion, commitment and energy to 'make a difference' in the battle against malaria. Members will be organising a variety of events to raise awareness and much needed funds for the Nothing But Nets campaign, as well as helping JCI UK to achieve its Nothing But Nets fund raising target for 2012.

It used to be that a child died every 30 seconds from malaria, but thanks to efforts made by organisations such as JCI, this has now increased to one child every 45 seconds. So you can see progress has been made but there still remains a long way to go to increase this time period to one minute and beyond. All the funds raised by your chambers will bring this target one step closer to being realised.

I know that some chambers have already got an event lined up for World Malaria Day, ranging from a pub quiz to a JCI UK sponsored parachute jump. For those chambers that haven't yet decided and are still looking for inspiration, here are some ideas for you and your council teams to think about:

• Wear orange at work day (the colour of the JCI Nothing But Nets campaign)
• Hold a charity lunch or dinner
• Guess the number or weight of a jar full of pennies, sweets etc.
• Cake sale
• Guess the bonus ball in the national lottery
• Karaoke night
• Caption competition - choose a photo from, for example, your last office party and ask entrants to pay per caption
• Card games evening (penny poker)
• Indoor games evening
• Dry cream cracker challenge - eat as many dry cream crackers in a minute, not as easy as it sounds!
• Quote quiz - collect as many quotes from movies, songs and so on and then test the knowledge of friends, family and work colleagues
• Bingo
• Smarties challenge - give your friends, family and work colleagues a tube of smarties and when they've eaten them, ask them to fill the empty tube with £1 coins
• iPod party - organise a evening event and then ask people to donate to play songs from their iPod - the worse the song the more they should pay!
• Cheese and wine evening - try classic combinations such as port and stilton or why not make up your own?
• Take the stairs not the lift and get sponsored per step
• Make your boss the most popular person in the office by getting them to donate a day's paid holiday as a raffle prize
• Darts competition
• Clothes Collection - JCI UK has again teamed up with 'Bag 2 the Future' to recycle old clothes and fundraise at the same time. To arrange a collection, the contact at 'Bag 2 the Future' is ian.woods@bag2thefuture.org

Another way for chambers to raise funds is to sell the JCI UK Nothing But Nets wrist-bands. To obtain a batch for your chamber, please contact Immediate Past National President Allison Cowell at allison.cowell@jciuk.org.uk  

If local presidents can let me know which event their chamber is holding on 25 April, I can then arrange for this information to be shared with other chambers.

Also, as happened last year, JCI UK has an agreement with the Dutch Cordaid foundation who will double whatever funds we generate, so if local chambers can arrange for all the money they raise to be given to JCI UK, we will send it to the Dutch Cordaid foundation and they will double the amount, result!

So what will you be doing on Wednesday 25 April?

I hope this has given you some useful ideas on how to raise awareness and much needed funds for JCI Nothing But Nets but if you require any further information, please feel free to e-mail me at richard.tong@jciuk.org.uk

Many thanks, Richard Tong