END7 STUDENTS

Leadership Opportunities

Apply to the END7 Campus Leaders Council to lead the fight against NTDs on your campus! We are recruiting talented students to lead NTD advocacy, education, and fundraising on campus as members of the Campus Leaders Council. You will receive a comprehensive education on NTD science and policy, peer mentoring from members of the END7 Student Advisory Board, opportunities to apply for funding to attend global health conferences and events, advance notice of internship opportunities at END7 and other global health organizations, and valuable leadership coaching. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Email END7 student coordinator Emily at emily.conron@sabin.org if you have any questions!

Key Resources

Create a fundraising page View our Prezi View action kit View factsheets

Ideas to Bring END7 to Your School

Join an international student movement to end the suffering of more than a billion people worldwide. You have a tremendous opportunity to end seven of the most common neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) – diseases that cause pain, disfiguration, and trap communities in poverty. Together, we can see the end of these preventable diseases by the year 2020, and your efforts will help get us there.

We have worked with some of our best student ambassadors to come up with this guide to organizing your own END7 events on campus. While taking a look, join our Facebook group for student leaders and email our student coordinator, Emily Conron, at emily.conron@sabin.org, to receive access to all our helpful resources. Our movement is growing and students at schools around the world are joining the END7 campaign because they want to make a difference in the effort to eliminate NTDs.

Many of the following ideas originated from student groups dedicated to NTD advocacy and fundraising, but we encourage you to undertake these events with any group you are involved in, including sports teams, residence halls, fraternities and sororities, or any other group of creative and visionary students.

Fundraising Events

Just 50¢ can treat and protect one person for up to one year against all seven neglected tropical diseases – so every little bit counts. 100% of your donations to END7 are sent directly to our partners in the field. HERE are some creative ideas from students. Feel free to make these ideas your own – and make sure to take photos and show us what you did so we can share! From trivia nights, to dirt cup sales , etc. see a full list here.

Educational Events

In order for your peers to be inspired to support this cause, it helps to explain just how devastating NTDs really are – and how many people they affect. (See our factsheets for more details to share.) “Educational” doesn’t have to mean boring – our student leaders have come up with creative educational events that draw a wide range of students, even some not previously interested in global health. Click here for more ideas to get you started.

Awareness-Raising Events & Promotional Ideas

To get your school behind this cause, think of creative ways to demonstrate the scope of NTDs. Awareness-raising activities are vital to making your other events successful and well-attended. Here are a few ideas we’ve thought of – including some fun and creative awareness-raising stunts.

Advocacy Opportunities

Recruitment & Membership-Building

If you and your friends are interested in starting a club to focus specifically on NTD advocacy and fundraising, you’re in good company! Students from campuses across the country and the world have started groups to focus on this issue. Here are some tips they found helpful when creating a movement around NTDs on their campuses.

Share your story!

Our best ideas come from our hard-working students around the world. We want to hear about your ideas and successful activities! We'd love to see photos to share on Facebook and post on our blog, End the Neglect. Send your story to Emily at Emily.Conron@sabin.org!

Fundraising Events

Just fifty cents can treat and protect one person for up to one year against all seven neglected tropical diseases – so every little bit counts! Below we’ve listed several different ways to jump-start your fundraising efforts, including sports-related ideas, seasonal ideas and more.

Sports Related

Inter-Campus Competition: Get a group of students from your rival school to participate in a fundraising competition in the weeks leading up to the big game. You can fundraise however you want – our online peer-to-peer fundraising tool is a great way to collect donations securely and track you and your rival’s progress!competition is doing. Advertise the competition with posters around campus and social media taglines like “Beat [Rival School]…Twice.” Announce the winning team at halftime of the big game. To make it extra competitive, try to get your school or an alum to agree to make a donation every time your team scores in the first half of the big game.

7k Race: Instead of running a 5k or half-marathon, run a 7k race to raise money for NTD control and elimination efforts. You can promote our goal to eliminate 7 diseases by marking every 1,000 meters with an informative poster. If you charged a $14 entrance fee, for instance, you could plant a poster every 1,000 meters with captions about one of the seven diseases like “Keep running! You just helped keep 4 kids safe from hookworm!” (1/7 of the entrance fee = $2 = the cost of 4 treatments)

Charity Game, Tournament, or even…Roller Derby!: Competitions are a fun way to raise money for charity. Charge a registration fee or sell t-shirts to participants. Don’t feel limited to the typical basketball or soccer tournaments – you could try dodgeball, kickball, or even corn hole.

#7 Athlete Calendar Sale: Sell calendars featuring a different #7 varsity athlete from your school on each month. Add END7-esque trivia about each athlete like “Dopey is his favorite of the Seven Dwarves” or “Her favorite 90’s TV show is Seventh Heaven.”

Pep Rally Face-Painting: Take advantage of the big crowds on campus before a big sporting event by setting up a face-painting booth for kids. This usually works best if you make the face-painting free but have a donation jar placed on the table and a stack of informational materials about END7 available. One student group that tried this event spent $12 on face paint and raked in over $250 in donations!

Seasonal

Trick or Treat for NTDs: Set up an “instant raffle” in a high traffic area of campus. Ask local businesses to donate gift cards to your group, and write the amount of each gift card on small slips of paper. Mix these slips in with other pieces of paper printed with facts about NTDs in a trick-or-treat pumpkin. For $1 or $2, a participant gets to draw a slip of paper out of the pumpkin – either a “trick” (fact about NTDs) or “treat” (gift card to a business of their choice in the amount on the slip).

Ugly Christmas Sweater Sale: Have every group member scour their grandmother’s closet and the thrift stores in their hometown over Thanksgiving break and bring every sweater they can find back to campus. Set up a booth at the student center and sell them at a profit.

End-of-Season Yard Sale: At the end of the semester, ask students to donate clothes or other items they no longer need, and your group can donate all of the funds raised to END7. Your group could also collect old formal dresses before a big campus formal and re-selling them to new owners.

Fun and Silly

Dirt Cup Sale: Make chocolate pudding “mud,” Oreo crumb “dirt,” and gummy “worms” desert cups and sell them at your school. This fundraiser has been very successful for the students of Notre Dame Fighting NTDs, who have raised over $1,000 for END7 by building up a following with once-a-semester Dirt Cup sales. Save money on supplies by buying ingredients in bulk at a warehouse store like Costco or from Amazon.com, which sell 5-pound bags of gummy worms, multi-packs of Jell-O pudding mix and Oreo cookies, and clear plastic cups (perfect for a cross-section view of the “mud” and “dirt”) in bulk. Make it educational by printing labels with a fact about NTDs to affix to the bottom of each cup – for patrons to read afterthey’re finished eating. The students at Notre Dame charged $2 per dessert, but feel free to set whatever price you think students will pay – and be sure to post signs showing how many people can be treated for the cost of one dessert!

Worm-Eating Competition: Charge an entrance fee for people to compete to see who can down the most gummy worms in 70 seconds.

Childhood Throwback Party: Charge admission to an END7-themed “Childhood Throwback Party”. Have a dirt cup-making station with info about NTDs, a running game of “Heads Up 7-Up,” a hopscotch tournament (there are seven boxes in a hopscotch board!), and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” playing in the corner.

Show Your Talents

Photo or Art Contest: Ask aspiring photographers and artists on your campus to submit their best work for a chance to be named “Best in Show.” Display the work in a well-trafficked campus venue with jars in front picture in which people can place coins or bills to “vote” for their favorite piece, with 50¢ equaling one vote. To raise more money, you can let supporters vote more than once.

Talent Show, Battle of the Bands, or Student Performance: Organize a talent show or Battle of the Bands and sell tickets to benefit END7. Alternatively, it's easy to use an already-planned performance as a fundraiser for END7. Consider adding a $1 to the cost of each ticket, and donating that to END7. That way, you can still cover your group's cost but also generate fund for END7. This will allow you to share END7 with a broader audience – you can even show one of our videos before the show or during intermission!

All Time Favorites

Penny War: “50¢ Can Change a Life!:” Penny wars, like bake sales, are another low-input high-impact fundraising activity. All you need are groups that like to compete with one another – perhaps different residence halls, fraternities/sororities, student groups, class years, etc. You will need a large, empty water jug container for each group participating – and a safe place to keep all the money you will accumulate. The goal is to be the team with the most pennies and the least nickels, dimes, and quarters in your container – so in order to win, a team would want to fill their own container with pennies, but then stuff everyone else's containers with every other kind of change. Every non-penny counts against the number of pennies in the jar, so ten pennies would be neutralized by the addition of a dime. All money collected can then be donated to END7.

Meal Auction: Raffle off dinner with “campus celebrities” like favorite professors, varsity athletes, and high-level administrators. The “celebrities” agree to pay for dinner, so the winner just pays the bid cost, with all proceeds going to END7.

Bake Sale: Bake sales are extremely effective, and generally involve small amounts of preparation and a good profit. Ask each member of your club, Greek life organization, class or other group to contribute one treat and sell them in a high-traffic area at your school. Make sure to keep some END7 information on hand so purchasers know where their money will be donated! Another fun twist is to sell each of your items for 50 cents (or pence!) and keep visual record of how many people your group is able to treat and protect as a result of your bake sale. Keep a running tally on the wall behind you, or tape up an additional "pill" made out of construction paper or poster board to represent another person who has been treated and protected.

Restaurant Fundraiser: Many restaurants (particularly in university and college towns) are open to charity nights where a group can receive a certain percentages of sales or profits on a given day or night. Make sure to bring plenty of END7 materials when you go speak to your favorite restaurant about a fundraiser so they know where the money will go, and then get busy promoting the event to get as many people as possible to attend and drive up sales. A number of national chains offer this type of partnership opportunity, including Baja Fresh, California Pizza Kitchen, Wendy’s Friendly’s, Five Guys, Coldstone Creamery and more. Locally-owned restaurants often are willing to be more flexible with their limitations on fundraisers and will sometimes donate a higher percentage of the proceeds to your cause than chains!

50 Cent Drink Night: Ask a favorite student bar if they would agree to sponsor a “50 Cent Drink Night” and donate 50¢ to END7 for every drink purchased that night by your 21+ supporters.

END7 Trivia Night: Sell tickets to a special trivia night at favorite student bar. Ask the bar to offer snacks or drink specials to participants…maybe 50¢ discounts? Make the “tickets” for the event a coaster or drink coozy branded with your club’s logo or END7 so attendees remember the cause long after the winning team is announced.

Raffles: The key to raffles is making sure that you don't need to spend money to get it off the ground, so don't feel like you have to buy prizes. Think hard about what is coveted on your campus! Sporting events? Meeting certain coaches? Concert tickets? Work with your school and other student groups for donations of campus-related items, then sell raffle tickets. If you do want to raffle prizes, see if off-campus businesses will donate gift cards or gift baskets to your group. If you want to raffle off something related to NTDs, TOMS Shoes are a fun and popular item. Since TOMS donates one pair of shoes for every pair they sell, your raffle is sure to help protect children from NTDs they can get by walking barefoot. Finally, 50-50 raffles are always popular promotions, and their name is ready-made for our cause! People purchase tickets for a chance to win half of whatever is raised by ticket sales, and your group can donate the other half of the final tally to END7. Make sure you check with your school about the rules for selling raffle tickets on your campus – some states have restrictions on raffle events. This activity is also an easy add-on to any other event you organize to benefit END7.

Educational Events

Basic and Broad-Reaching | More In-Depth

Explaining just how devastating NTDs really are – and how many people they affect -- helps encourage your peers to support your cause. "Educational” doesn’t have to mean boring – our student leaders have come up with creative educational events that draw a wide range of students, even some not previously interested in global health. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Basic and Broad-Reaching

Video Promo: Show the END7 “Mission in a Minute” or “Celebrity Shocker” on the Jumbotron at a big sporting event on campus or before a film screening. You can easily make this into a fundraiser by taking up a collection after the video and planting volunteers at the exits to take donations after the event. Bonus points if you show a video YOUR club made to make your message personal – see “Promotional Materials” for ideas.

Breakfast & Brochure Giveaway: Contact a local bagel or doughnut place to see if they would consider donating a few boxes to your group. Set up a table outside a big classroom building before morning classes start with the food and lots of informational materials. This is also a great way to promote other events you are planning if you hand out schedules of your upcoming fundraisers with the free food.

Campus Media Plug: Ask your student newspaper, magazine, TV channel, or radio station to feature a story or editorial series on NTDs. Ask well-known professors or student athletes to write a piece on why NTDs matter to them.

More In-Depth

Interdisciplinary lecture panel: “NTDs: A Major Problem, A Problem for Every Major”: Lots of students don’t get involved in global health issues because they think they need a science background to make a difference. While the global movement for health equity certainly needs the contributions of doctors and researchers, it also needs the talents of engineers, the insights of sociologists, the foresight of business leaders, and the participation of everyone in between to succeed. Ask professors from a variety of disciplines to give short reflections on their discipline’s contribution to global health as part of a panel discussion. (Many professors will give their students extra credit for attending such an event – ask around to see if they will help promote the event!)

Book Club: Have students read a global health-related book and discuss it in parts or all at once over a meal. Dr. Peter Hotez, President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and a major researcher on NTDs, has authored “Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases.” If your friends are serious about getting involved in this cause, it’s a must-read!

Movie/Documentary Screening: Show a movie related to global health and discuss the issues it raises as a group. Even “Slumdog Millionaire” has teachable moments ready-made for you to pause and discuss issues ranging from sanitation and unclean water to human trafficking. A documentary on the fight against river blindness, “Dark Forest, Black Fly,” is set to premiere soon.

Annual London Declaration Tea and Scones Discussion: Celebrate the anniversary of the January 2012 London Declaration on NTDs by gathering to over tea and scones to discuss the progress the world has made towards accomplishing the ambitious goals laid out at this meeting of international leaders – which included eliminating 7 NTDs by the year 2020.

Awareness-Raising Events

To get your entire school community behind your cause, think of creative ways to demonstrate the scope of NTDs – how many people they infect and how much harm they cause. Awareness-raising activities are vital to making your other events successful and well-attended. Here are a few ideas we’ve thought of, but you can work off of the basic facts about NTDs – that they infect 1.4 billion people, or 1 in 6 people worldwide; that they are spread when kids walk barefoot or drink unclean water or get bit by mosquitoes and flies; that it only costs 50¢ to protect someone from all 7 NTDs for a whole year – to come up with your own awareness-raising stunt. Be sure to follow up awareness-raising events with a way for participants to learn more about NTDs so you capture their interest!

“One in six” Visual: Buy enough cheap give-away items (silly hats, feather boas, etc.) to hand out to 1/6 of the crowd at a big sporting event or performance on campus, or try to recruit that number of people to wear a certain color t-shirt. At halftime or intermission, have the announcer read a statement or show a video sharing the statistic that one in six people have an NTD, and point out everyone in the audience that would be affected. Alternatively, give a piece of candy to every person entering (or place it under their seat beforehand) and ask them to save it until halftime or intermission. At that point, ask everyone with a certain flavor of candy to raise their hand (having apportioned the candy so that one in six pieces was that color), and make the same announcement.

Forking/planting on the quad: For a powerful visual, plant as many plastic forks, wooden stakes, or whatever you can buy cheaply in large quantities on the main quad of your school (you may want to contact the grounds department for permission first). Divide 1.4 billion by the number of whatever it was you planted – for instance, if you planted 1,000 miniature flags, each one would represent 1.4 million people infected with an NTD – and write the proportion on a large sign in front of the quad. You can do this with anything small – for instance, making a pile of paperclips as big as you can, each one representing thousands of people infected.

TOMS “Day Without Shoes tie-ins”: Every spring, TOMS Shoes designates one day as the annual “Day Without Shoes.” Raise awareness of NTDs that infect kids who Spread the word with posters encouraging others to do the same. Get creative and host a “barefoot party” or “barefoot karaoke competition.” Ask a campus fitness instructor to offer a free barefoot yoga or Zumba class on the quad. Do whatever it takes to get students talking about the importance of shoes and de-worming to keep kids safe and free of NTDs like hookworm and roundworm.

Promotional Material

Poster Ideas:

“If This Campus Were the World": Relate the prevalence of NTDs to the proportion of students at your school. For instance, 14% of the world is infected with roundworm. Can you think of something that describes 14% of your school population? For instance, if your school has 5,000 students, and 700 are engineering majors (14%), you could say “If our school were the world, every engineering major would have roundworm.” You can find all of the statistics you need to recreate this poster idea, and many more facts about NTDs, on our factsheets.

“Join the Team”: Ask a varsity athlete on your school’s big team who wears the #7 if you can use their photo on a poster. Put a quote in a speech bubble like “I joined the team to beat NTDs” and information about our cause or an upcoming event your group is planning.

Video Inspiration:

“Save to Make Change”: Film students walking around to various campus eateries and choosing to “downsize” their order to save 50¢ or $1. Students at Notre Dame produced a video like this to show how easy it is to save enough money to protect a person from 7 NTDs for a whole year.

“How to Shock a College Student”: Create your own “reaction video” to END7’s wildly popular “How to Shock a Celebrity” video by filming students while they watch footage about NTDs for the first time. Splice their reactions together to show how shocking NTDs really are. Maybe you can get the football team to try to keep a game face while they watch this powerful footage! Be sure to send us the finished video so we can post it on our Facebook page for all of our followers to see.

Click here to see a creative video created by students from London School of Health and Tropical Medicine, titled "Parasites Paradise."

Advocacy Opportunities

We will share regular opportunities for students to use their voices to amplify our message to policymakers and world leaders – be sure to follow us on Facebook and join the END7 Students Facebook group to stay in the loop! However, you can tie advocacy opportunities into many other events you organize on campus. If you host an event or fundraiser around the time that a major policy decision is set to be made about NTDs and global health – for instance, if Congress is debating the budget and NTD funding is in jeopardy – you could also ask attendees or passerby to sign a petition to preserve NTD funding. College students love to sign petitions , and they can make a big difference in policy decisions, especially if your campus is located in a key voting district.

Recruitment & Membership-Building

Address a captive audience: Ask science professors if they will allow club members to give a short presentation on NTDs in their class. Follow the presentation with a description of your group and the activities you are planning, and be sure to pass around sign-up sheets to recruit new members!

Start your own Twitter hashtag: The internet is a busy place, so make sure your message stands out!

Host regular club dinners: either in the dining hall or by serving pizza at club meetings. (Remember: food = increased attendance. Always.) A “Volunteer Appreciation Dinner” after a big event is always a great way to thank your loyal supporters!

Start a Club Learning Library: Give club members a chance to do some independent learning outside of club meetings by setting up a Club Learning Library with books about NTDs and global health in a campus space that’s accessible to most students but still secure – the Student Activities Office is usually a good space. Be sure to put a book sign-out sheet in a visible place and label all of the books with your club’s name and contact information so you get them back! Here are some great titles to start with: Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases: The Neglected Tropical Diseases and Their Impact on Global Health and Development by Peter Hotez; Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases by Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster; Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer; Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer; Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction by Paul Farmer; To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation by Paul Farmer.

Collaborate with other groups: Because NTDs are related to so many issues, from nutrition to water and sanitation to education to HIV/AIDS, it shouldn’t be hard to find students who are passionate about an issue related to NTDs. Seek them out and offer to collaborate on a fundraiser or advocacy event, or work with your campus activities office to arrange an event to bring many groups together. Students at Notre Dame hold an annual “Back-to-School Global Health Bonfire” to bring together interested students and showcase opportunities for them to get involved – while roasting s’mores!

Don’t forget swag!

Personalized t-shirts: Students never say no to free t-shirts – and when the proceeds go to a good cause, they’ll even pay for them. When designing the shirt, get creative with your school’s logo, mascot, or colors to spread a message about NTDs. Additionally, personalized shirts help advertise your club around campus and help identify leaders at your events. Contact Emily at Emily.Conron@sabin.org to get a high-quality version of the END7 logo if you would like to feature it on your shirts.

Gummy worms! Need we explain why?

Bug-shaped “Sillybandz” bracelets: These bracelets were all the rage a few years ago, and you can buy them in bulk for just pennies each.

Share your story!

Our best ideas come from our hard-working students around the world. We want to hear about your ideas and successful activities! We'd love to see photos to share on Facebook and post on our blog, End the Neglect. Send your story to Emily at Emily.Conron@sabin.org!