“We wanted to do a nonprofit that would benefit those less fortunate than us,” Yu said. “We wanted to do a local community service organization.”

STOMP was created less than a year ago by students in professor Gabe Ording’s ISB 201 class, Insects, Globalization and Sustainability. Students were concerned about the impact of malaria around the world. In 2006, malaria caused about 880,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

“There was so much enthusiasm, we thought we’d start our own organization,” said Ording, the group’s faculty adviser. “Nowhere in the U.S. can you find student organizations to prevent malaria. Bill Gates gave a lecture a few days ago, and in his lecture he suggested that more money is being put forth to solve baldness than to solve malaria.”

“Baldness is a sad thing, but not in the same realm of malaria.”

The group’s goal is to earn the money necessary to adopt a village in Kenya and protect villagers from malaria, which Ording said is the leading cause of death internationally, by screening the villagers’ homes with mosquito netting.

“It’s so easily preventable that it seems like something needs to be done,” Tynes said.

The nets and tools needed to install them would cost about $122 per home, he said.

STOMP members would visit Kenya to personally set up the netting.

“If you say you want to change the world, this is about as hands-on as you can get,” Lutz said. “The four of us, we’re just trying to facilitate this.”

The students will find out March 17 if they are among the 10 groups to qualify for the final round — a trip to New York to give the presentation to a panel of judges at the J.P. Morgan headquarters.