Throwing the First Stone

Sharon Stone is an actor, most famous for sexy movie roles. She's a blond, too, so we know all about her, right?

Recently Sharon Stone stood up in a crowd and pledged a $10,000 donation. Nobody asked her to, it wasn't a fund-raising event. But she made it one--she challenged others in the audience to pony up. And oddly enough, they did. In five minutes, Sharon Stone raised one million dollars.

For what? you might well ask. Not her Oscar dress. Not even for a currently fashionable charity, however worthy, like the upteenth solicitation/benefit/etc/ for tsunami victims.

For mosquito nets. For African children.

It seems Sharon Stone was in the audience for a panel discussion on poverty in Africa at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. One of the panelists mentioned that 150,000 children in Africa die each and every month of malaria, principally because they don't have mosquito nets for their beds.

So Sharon Stone disrupts the tsk tsk panel discussion, and finances a way to address the problem. Which is one important thing. But here's the other important thing.

One million dollars buys time for a 30 second campaign commercial. One million dollars pays for one one-thousandth of one week's military spending the U.S. devotes to Iraq.

But those mosquito nets cost $7 each. They last for five years. One million dollars buys nearly 150,000 mosquito nets. That's the lives of 150,000 children. The Grim Reaper gets a whole month off.

One blond. Five minutes.

She puts the leaders of the world to shame.

And with one week's worth of what the U.S. is spending in Iraq, which is one billion dollars, which is one thousand times a million dollars, the children of Africa would sleep in safety.

BBC NEWS Entertainment Film Actress Stone raises fast million