Imagine 31 Birthdays…

Imagine 31 Birthdays…
A gravedigger walks among dozens of fresh graves in the children's section of the Penga Penga Cemetery in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only one in five children in this city of 3 million survives to age five due to malaria. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
A gravedigger walks among dozens of fresh graves in the children’s section of the Penga Penga Cemetery in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only one in five children in this city of 3 million survives to age five due to malaria. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.

Today is my thirty-first birthday.

My work with Imagine No Malaria has introduced me to the faces and stories of children all across the continent of Africa who will never live to see their fifth birthday, much less thirty-one.

In fact, of the 655,000 lives lost each year, 85% of those who die are children under the age of five.

In this photograph, a man walks through a graveyard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  This community has a practice of not giving their children names until they reach the age of five… in part to keep from forming attachments to children who are so unlikely to survive.  Those tombstones that are simply empty wooden crosses… those are the graves of children who died without a name.

What if you could do something to change that picture?  What if you could help a child to have another birthday?  What if you could buy a bed net to prevent them from getting this terrible disease that will take their life?

It’s as simple as giving $10.  Ten bucks saves a life.

For my birthday, I want to help save the lives of thirty-one children.  I want to help provide a future, hope, life, and health for these little ones.

Will you help?

Visit Imagine 31 Birthdays…  to celebrate my birthday this year by helping 31 children to have another.

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