KU News Release

Dodgeball tournament organized by KU students will benefit international charity

LAWRENCE — Thinking creatively is an integral part of LaChrystal Ricke’s Problem Solving in Teams and Groups class. And in her fifth and final semester of teaching, the University of Kansas graduate teaching assistant wanted her students to take on something big.

Ricke, who plans to graduate in May with a doctorate in communication studies, and her students decided to organize a fundraiser for Nothing But Nets, an international charity that supplies insecticide-treated bed nets to areas in Africa where malaria rates are highest.

The event, a universitywide dodgeball tournament, will take place at noon Saturday, April 26, at Robinson Center. Each team of five or six people will pay an entry fee of $30 that will be donated to Nothing But Nets. Refreshments will be provided.

Additionally, the students will host an event that evening at Abe & Jake’s, 8 E. Sixth St. Starting at 9 p.m., there will be a DJ in the main room, and local bands will perform. A cover charge, $5 for those 21 and older and $7 for those 18-20, will be donated to the Nothing But Nets campaign.

“I wanted students to come away from my class with something tangible under their belts,” Ricke said. “I wanted to make the students more marketable when they go out into the job market by being able to say that they had done something, not just planned something.”

The project began when Ricke restructured the format of the class to accommodate a final project in which students would plan, fund, promote and implement a communitywide fundraiser for a charity of their choice. The students worked in small groups to research foundations to pitch to the class. Students voted and chose Nothing But Nets as their beneficiary.

According to the Nothing But Nets Web site, malaria kills one person every 30 seconds and is the leading cause of death in children in Africa. Malaria is spread through mosquitoes biting a human, mainly during the night while the person is asleep and unprotected. The bed nets distributed by the organization reportedly protect a family of four for up to four years.

The KU events coincide with World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25. According to the official World Malaria Day Web site, the day was established at the 60th World Health Assembly in March 2007. The event’s goal is to “provide education and understanding of malaria as a global scourge that is preventable and a disease that is curable.”

Ricke and her students have high hopes for the events.

“I hope my class gains a sense of accomplishment from having done something not only tangible, but to help those that need it,” she said. “ I hope that the students get a better idea of what it is like to work in an organizational setting, where they are not just responsible to the five people they work directly with, but to an entire organization. We are all interdependent on one another to make this project a success, and we have to learn how to communicate how to make that happen.”