It all started with the formal dance this past December at the Bracebridge campus of Nipissing University and prizes for an auction donated by the community.

The students decided the beneficiary of their fundraiser would be Spread the Net, a campaign founded in November 2006 by Belinda Stronach and comedian Rick Mercer to reduce the number of deaths in Third World countries by malaria.

“When we started this, we didn’t know where it would take us,” said Alicia Brown, a second-year child and family studies student at Nipissing University’s Bracebridge campus.

Then came the bottle campaign, originally started as a personal campaign by child and family studies student Lynn DeCaro. Students donated beer, wine and liquor bottles from their own collections as well as from parents and neighbours.

The students have also organized a quilt sale.

“They buy a plain square for $5 and decorate it however they like,” said Brown. On March 14, the squares will be collected for assembly. The completed quilt will be on display at the new Nipissing University campus, now under construction at Jubilee Park.

Their initial goal was to raise $1,000 but the response has been so good Brown expects they will raise more.

The university will be holding a community bottle drive between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on March 1 at Monsignor Michael O’Leary School on Tamarack Trail in Bracebridge.

Quilt squares will be available at that time.

“Volunteers will go around town and pick up bottles,” said Brown.

The Spread the Net website says that as of February 2008, UNICEF has obtained more than 102,600 bed nets for Liberia and Rwanda. The total campaign target is 500,000.

A $10 donation to Spread the Net covers the purchase of an insecticide-treated bed net, the transportation and distribution of the net to families, community education about proper use of the net, monitoring use after distribution, administrative costs and UNICEF’s work on malaria policy.