AMERICAN GIVING | Strengthening communities through generosity
12 February 2008
Pennies from American Schoolchildren Build Afghan Schools
Roots of Peace expands land mine removal focus to schools, sports fields
Washington -- American students as young as age 5 are among those now contributing actively to Afghanistan’s recovery from war and land mines as they raise funds through Roots of Peace to build schools and playgrounds to benefit their peers on the other side of the globe.
The Roots of Peace Penny Campaign raised $20,000 through school and community outreach. Recently, it used some of the funds to finance completion of a 10-room school in northeast Afghanistan for 260 Afghan boys and girls in an area that slowly is being reclaimed from the presence of land mines. The school is one of four in the country that the campaign has helped.
Founder Heidi Kuhn said the idea behind the Roots of Peace Penny Campaign was to ask for the smallest money denomination so that every American child -- from Harlem in New York City to Oakland in California -- could participate. She told America.gov February 10 she was inspired by the Latin motto -- E Pluribus Unum (from many, one) -- that appears on U.S. coins.
“So from many pennies of children, come one vision for education and fair play on former mine fields,” she said.
She founded Roots of Peace in 1997, inspired in part by the late Princess Diana’s work to eradicate land mines, as well as Kuhn’s experience as a cancer survivor. The organization has been a long-time partner of the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (RWA) located in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which has provided $200,000 to help Roots of Peace’s main mission of converting former mine fields into agricultural land.
The United State s remains the top financial contributor for land mine safety and eradication, providing more than $1.2 billion since 1993. (See “U.S. Still Top Financial Contributor to Humanitarian Mine Action.”)
ROOTS OF PEACE PENNY CAMPAIGN HAS WIDE COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
Kuhn said many American mothers easily can identify with the plight of mothers in Afghanistan and other war-torn areas when they consider the dangers faced by the children.
“You kick a soccer [football] ball out of bounds and there is a grave consequence. When they think their mom or dad isn’t looking, off they go to fetch the only ball in the community, and off goes a limb,” Kuhn said, adding it only takes eight pounds (3.6 kilograms) of pressure to detonate a land mine.
“Each one of my children weighed eight pounds [at birth]. So I really approached this from the heart of a mother.”
Hundred of schools across the country got involved in the Roots of Peace Penny Campaign, and Kuhn said the wider communities also were motivated, recounting that even some homeless people in the community, who often receive charity themselves, had mobilized to collect pennies on behalf of Afghan children.
Contributors not only have given money to build schools and safe places to play football, but also have provided educational supplies.
The Afghan children “need just the basics,” she said. “We got the Napa Valley [California] Sheriff’s Department, the police department, everybody was out collecting pens and pencils and tools for these kids.”
Kuhn said children everywhere can relate to football and the effect land mines have on everyday activities such as playing outdoors and walking to school. They also understand the importance of building bridges across cultures.
On February 8, Marin County , California, students, on their own initiative, established the Peacegram program as part of the Roots of Peace Penny Campaign, choosing to forgo the 25-cent Candygrams they normally would receive for the Valentine’s Day holiday and use the money instead to fund the establishment of more Afghan schools and football fields.
“To give up your candy, that’s a pretty big thing for a little kid,” Kuhn said, but children that young, ranging from 5 years old to 12, understand what is at stake. They “get it from the heart,” Kuhn said.
When Kuhn, her daughter, Kyleigh, and California television news anchor Cheryl Jennings traveled to Afghanistan in 2005, then 16-year-old Kyleigh saw children in a village near Bagram forced to study in tents. She made the goal of raising money to build them a school.
Kuhn returned one year later with Shamim Jawad, the wife of Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, to lay the cornerstone of the new school. She said the grateful Afghan students, who named the school in Kyleigh’s honor, were surprised to see them again.
“The tradition in Afghanistan [is] people come and do a ‘look-see,’ but they never come back, and here we came back to these same kids with not only a look-see, looking around, but we laid the cornerstone [for the school] in the cement,” she said.
Shamin Jawad also was instrumental in helping Roots of Peace secure a $10,000 grant from the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council to complete work on Mir Bocha Kot School’s football field as well as a safety perimeter wall and in obtaining football uniforms and equipment.
KUHN BELIEVES AFGHANISTAN WILL CHANGE THROUGH EDUCATION
Despite Roots of Peace’s accomplishments in Afghanistan, Kuhn worries that “this window of opportunity is narrowing,” to provide hope because the country continues to face severe challenges.
She said her organization is seeking to build hope “from the ground up” with a special emphasis on Afghanistan’s rising generation.
“I think it has to be done genuinely and I think it needs to be done aggressively,” she said.
Roots of Peace, which also currently funds projects in Croatia and Angola to reduce the risk of land mines, now is looking for a fifth school to build in Afghanistan. Kuhn hopes that number eventually will expand to 50 or 100 schools.
“This is how Afghanistan is going to change,” she said, “though education.”
More information is available on the Roots of Peace Web site.
Additional information about the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement partnerships is available on the State Department’s Web site.
