ACE is pleased to announce that its website www.StopGerms.org is now going 3-D!  In order to expand the reach of its Disease Prevention Program ACE’s popular interactive house is being duplicated into a virtual form on Second Life.

Second Life is a quickly growing unique 3-D virtual world with approximately nine million participants from across the world.  While it is often considered a social site, it is now being used by major corporations, governmental entities, educational institutions and non-profit organizations to reach new audiences and raise funds to support various charitable efforts. Additionally, Second Life has recently been profiled in all types of media, including major publications and online sources such as the New York Times, Business Week, and CNN.
 
ACE will take advantage of this new media and educational trend to educate new audiences on how to keep their home healthy by preventing the spread of germs. Visitors to the virtual house will be able to interact with and learn more about common germs found on surfaces and areas within every home. ACE will also be able to survey and gather feedback from visitors in order to make its main Disease Prevention Program more effective

From a partner building perspective this activity allows ACE to creatively work with major colleges and universities such as Harvard, New York University, University College Dublin, and Stanford to develop new ways of getting this preventative message to even wider audiences. 

It also opens brand new methods of fundraising campaigns. This past June, the American Cancer Society successfully raised $75,000 in a virtual two day walk-a-thon on Second Life.  Click here for more information. In illustrating the recent upswing in activity in the virtual world, this amount was nearly double the amount the organization had raised in the same event the previous year. Click here for more information.

For a better understanding and illustration of Second Life, a concise video can be found on YouTube via the following link:  (link)

Website:
www.StopGerms.org remains the foundation of ACE’s Disease Prevention Program. This summer new content including “healthy tips for the home” and “back to school FAQs” has been developed and posted to the website.

Traffic to the site remains steady due to the wide variety of links to the site from outside organizations and personal blogs. Most recently, a Malaysian exchange student studying in Texas referenced and linked ACE’s StopGerms site in her August 10th posting, “I've found this great website which gives you a tour of the germs in every part of your house! I hope that the website will still be there when I have children. I'll definitely bring my children for the tour one day.” (link)

Awards:
ACE’s StopGerms.org site has also recently won two more awards this summer. In June the site won the 2007 APEX Grand Award for the “Web & Intranet Sites” competition.  Of the thousands of entries only 114 received Grand Awards, which is the highest recognition APEX (Awards for Publication Excellence Competition) judges can bestow.

In July ACE received notification that the website had also won the Gold Award in Design and Presentation for the Fourth Annual Magnum Opus Awards. This award is widely regarded as one of the publishing industry’s premiere competitions and Stopgerms.org, chosen out of a pool of more than 800 entries, emerged as one of the highest rated sites in the competition