joining the fight against malaria

An ExxonMobil couple and a New Jersey high school help a community in Kenya, with support from the Africa Health Initiative.

This article originally appeared in the Lamp, 2007 — Number 4

Andrew Jackson spends his days working in the New Jersey headquarters of ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, furthering the goals of Corporate Strategic Research. In July, however, the senior scientific advisor was on a hillside a world away, making a presentation about malaria before hundreds of villagers in rural Kenya. Jackson was on an unconventional vacation, chaperoning 15 high school students on a two-week trip to Kenya. The trip was organized by the Model World Health Organization of Hopewell Valley Central High School in Pennington, New Jersey, and supported by ExxonMobil Foundation through its Africa Health Initiative.

Since 2000, ExxonMobil Foundation has donated $40 million to organizations working to ease the burden of malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that claims a million lives a year and slows the pace of progress in developing countries. Ninety percent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

Effective prevention
One of the most effective malaria interventions that ExxonMobil supports is the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets. “The Model World Health Organization club raised money to donate bed nets during our trip to Kenya,” says Jackson. “With the help of a significant grant from ExxonMobil Foundation, the group was able to deliver more than 5,000 bed nets to the area instead of the few hundred they had initially anticipated through their own fundraising efforts.”

Located in Western Kenya near Lake Victoria, Keroka was a primary destination on the student trip. It’s also the birthplace of Hopewell Valley biology teacher David Angwenyi, the founder and sponsor of the popular club, which fosters student awareness of global diseases. “I wanted students to go beyond the classroom and reach out to the world,” says Angwenyi.

Angwenyi’s fellow club sponsor is Hopewell Valley chemistry teacher Lillian Rankel, who retired from Mobil’s Central Research Laboratory in 1995 after working for 17 years in catalysis research, and is now in her 13th year of a teaching career. Rankel is also Andy Jackson’s wife.

The first stop on the Kenya trip was Nairobi, where Esther Njuguna, executive director of the Sustainable Healthcare Foundation, briefed the students on the country’s health issues and on bed nets in particular. The nonprofit organization supports a franchise network of Child and Family Wellness (CFW) shops and clinics, independently owned by Kenyan health workers.

Later in the journey, the group visited and observed a CFW clinic firsthand. There are no CFW outlets in the area, so Njuguna shipped the bed nets to a group of local leaders and clergy in Keroka. The leaders were selected by Angwenyi to distribute the bed nets in 12 neighboring villages. Since the bulk of the bed nets were not scheduled to arrive in Keroka until after Jackson, his wife and the others departed from Kenya, Jackson’s group took about 100 bed nets with them to distribute and use for local demonstrations.

Eager participants
A large turnout of villagers, including local dignitaries, convened at a hillside amphitheater for a presentation on malaria and a bed net demonstration. Jackson, supported by a translator, was the main presenter. “The audience was definitely enthusiastic,” he says. “We had to emphasize that we didn’t have all of the 5,000 bed nets for them right then and there, but they would be following shortly.”

In the months since their visit, the bed net distribution and training has gone smoothly. “The principal clergyman who helped us, Father Lucas Ongessa, calls from Keroka about once a week with an update,” Jackson says.

The full club itinerary in Kenya included visits to two orphanages, a high school for the blind (one of the students who went on the trip is blind), a trade school, two private girls’ academies, and a primary and secondary school in Keroka. The group also went on a safari in the Samburu and Masai Mara national wildlife reserves. Thanks to the generosity of the wider Hopewell community, the students brought along 1,500 pounds of donations, ranging from thousands of pencils and pens to solar-powered calculators and laptop computers. The University of Wisconsin donated nanotechnology teaching kits as well. As logistics manager for the trip, Jackson made sure all excess capacity in any traveler’s baggage allowance was used for donations.

“One of our students pointed out how excited students in Kenya were just to get a pencil,” says Rankel. “He said, ‘At Hopewell, if a kid drops a pencil on the floor, no one even bothers to pick it up.’”

Return engagements
Now back in New Jersey, the students are already thinking up the next steps for supporting the communities they helped in Kenya.

This winter, Jackson hopes to return to Keroka on the club’s behalf for a follow-up assessment of the community’s needs. “This has turned into a potentially lifelong interest for me,” he says, “to try to make a real difference in the lives of several thousand people.”