Rick Mercer: An Arsehole talks about Africa

Before travelling to Africa with Belinda Stronach a couple of summers ago, Rick Mercer vowed never to “come back from Africa like one of the arseholes on TV who won’t shut up about Africa”.  After reneging on that promise (which is fine with me!) the two of them started Spread the Net, a charity (obviously) focused on reducing the incidence of malaria through the purchase of bed nets (also obvious).

Mercer was here in Vancouver this week to promote Spread the Net’s Student Challenge, pitting high schools and universities against each other in the quest to raise the most money for the charity.  The winners will receive a visit from Mercer, who will tape a show of The Rick Mercer Report on that campus.

Apart from the weirdness of the message from Mercer and Stronach in the header of the website, I think that the effort to rally students nationally is pretty cool.  Of course, the site and project doesn’t go in to the complexities of solving the problem of malaria…read here for a critique of the bed net approach.