Awareness of these killer diseases are lacking in the world today. Why not help spread awareness by telling someone what the biggest killer in the world today is? Or give the URL of this website to someone?

One of the most telling comments we received while conducting our survey - and raising awareness for Acute Respiratory Infections and how they killed the most people yearly - was one word: 'wow'. It was shockingly apparent how little many people knew about Pneumonia - it was a disease of the old, or something very few people got, in many of our classmates' minds.

Here are some of the things we did in order to generate interest and awareness. Why not try some of them in your own communities?

Michael runs a website with a forum that has close to 2000 members - information about our project was posted and highlighted there, in order to raise awareness in communities outside of our own. The large majority of members there are teenagers, just like us - raising awareness within our age group is one of the most important things we have sought to achieve.

We also have created our own forum, which has a growing number of dedicated members, which will continue to generate interest in Pneumonia and other deadly killers in the future as word of our website spreads. It offers discussion areas for news, as well as specific areas to discuss poverty, and killer diseases. Our online survey has been accessed by nearly 100 people - with 100+ people taking it offline, we have now surveyed 200 or more people. As this survey is still available, the number continues to grow. E-mails were forwarded to friends and family (and via MSN, of course), reaching approximately 200 people.

Within our community, we acted as spokesmen - our project was also advertised on the front page of the Friday Flash (PDF link), the school's weekly newspaper, which reaches all families of the 1,000+ students at the school. The administration also posted information of our project on the school BBS (or forum), which is accessed by every student. We also printed out dozens and dozens of flyers (PDF Link) advertising the website and made them available in various places for people to pick up. We requested for a feature in the education section of The Star, a national Malaysian newspaper, as well as in the student section of The Expat, another widely known magazine. We have also posted a notice on The Star's website, which will reach countless other Malaysians within our country. In the future, we'll seek further mention in our school magazine, the Panorama, for its next edition.

Michael G (14) and Patrick G (12), Doors to Diplomacy 2007