Malaria has gotten hold of 6-year-old Umba Imolo. His father carried him four miles to this hospital in Karawa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The severely dehydrated boy is receiving a saline drip, but to fully recover he will need a costly blood transfusion.

Staff at Karawa General Hospital claim that nearly every child in the area contracts the disease. A nurse says, “[Malaria] kills children. I’m used to seeing that many times.”

With malaria being 100 percent preventable, the lives of children like Umba are in our hands. Insecticide-treated bed nets prevent children from contracting the disease from mosquitoes at night. World Vision distributed more than 2.2 million bed nets in Africa last year and plans to distribute millions more over the next three years, working toward a 75-percent reduction in malaria cases and near-zero preventable deaths in targeted areas by 2015.

Everyone can help—buy a bed net for a child and family; ask government leaders to maintain malaria funding; pray; or spread the word. Children like Umba are worth the effort.

To learn more, visit endmalaria.org.

Rural Mongolia is buzzing with opportunities. In 2009, a group of 11 families in Selenge province received 37 beehives from World Vision, each containing about 15,000 bees.

Participants have now expanded to 64 hives and plan to reach 80 this summer — that’s after returning the original 37 hives to World Vision so that the organization can help another group of beekeepers get started. 

Each family earns around $250 per month from selling honey made by the insects. Given this opportunity and a little startup support, these families are, well, busy as bees.