UN Uses Social Media to Raise Awareness for Malaria

The United Nation’s Special Envoy for Malaria will be announcing a special Social Media Envoy group that would be using the far reach and power of social media in order to help raise awareness for malaria control in Africa.

The special Social Media Envoy is composed of well known figures from both the broadcast media and the social web. Those that have joined this group have pledged to do their part and to taking social action – like a Tweet or a Facebook post each month for the next year starting on the World Malaria Day which takes place on April 25.

The group aims to motivate the social media audiences to support malaria control through tweets, posts and other social media actions that can inspire people to support this cause. The United Nation’s goal is to provide all endemic African countries to have malaria control through interventions by the end of 2010. They aim to work towards near zero deaths from malaria by the year 2015.

Using the power of social media in the fight against Malaria is a good move for the United Nations. The disease is something that everyone should be aware about and this should be controlled immediately. Malaria takes one million victims to their death each year and 90% of those deaths happen in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There is a lot of money needed to be raised and there is a lot of work to be done for this cause. It would be better if the group would be able to go beyond the once a month social action that they have committed to. Malaria after all is not an easy battle to cope with.

The 2010 Social Media Envoys are the following:

• Derrick Ashong, Musician, Social Activist & Oprah Radio host
• Veronica Belmont, Host of “Tekzilla” and “Qore” and Internet Personality
• Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey
• Sarah Brown, of MillionMums.org and wife of Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister
• Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable (Mashable)
• Anderson Cooper, CNN Anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360?
• Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare (Foursquare)
• Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs and Partner at Activate
• Justine Ezarik, “iJustine”, Internet Personality
• Jack Gray, CNN Producer/Writer for “Anderson Cooper 360?
• Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post; www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
• Guy Kawasaki, Co-founder of Alltop.com
• Larry King, CNN Host of “Larry King Live”
• Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic (Seesmic)
• Alyssa Milano, Actress
• Dave Morin, Former Facebook executive- responsible for Facebook Connect and Platform
• Jeff Pulver, Founder of 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) and Co-founder of VoIP (Vonage)
• Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg (Digg)
• Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital
• Ryan Seacrest, Founder, Ryan Seacrest Productions
• Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter (Twitter)
• Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco
• Jon Wheatley, Co-founder of DailyBooth.com
• Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing, Facebook