By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin Powell honored students from Marin County, California, at the State Department in Washington for raising $70,000 to help clear landmines in Afghanistan in a program known as "Pennies for Peace."

At a May 20 ceremony, Powell personally thanked eight middle- and high-school students for organizing and coordinating the collection of seven million pennies ($70,000) that have been given to the U.N. Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to de-mine schoolyards and soccer fields in the Afghan provinces of Parwan, Kabul and Wardak.

The secretary described the State Department's de-mining program as "one of the most important programs in the Department," and praised private donor organizations, such as "Pennies for Peace," which work with the State Department as part of a public-private partnership.

"[W]e are very proud of our efforts and this is a unique feature of our effort when civic-minded young people get together and realize that you have an obligation to serve humankind and not just humankind here at home, but elsewhere in the world," said Powell.

Powell was presented with a proclamation of thanks from San Raphael, California, Mayor Albert Boro for recognizing the students' efforts. Powell, in turn, gave the students commemorative coins of the U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program.

"Pennies for Peace" was founded by 16 year-old Kyleigh Kuhn on September 11, 2003, two years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, to raise awareness of land mines and support mine victims in Afghanistan. Kuhn said she conceived the idea after visiting Croatia and seeing a war-torn area first-hand.

Land mines miss their intended target most of the time, but have lethal consequences for children, she explained. "I felt that it was my duty to use the opportunity I had been given to work to really give the children a better chance to survive," she said.

Kyleigh was supported in her work by her mother, Heidi Kuhn, who founded Roots of Peace, a humanitarian organization dedicated to the eradication of landmines by returning de-mined land to productive agricultural use. Her organization is overseeing the Pennies for Peace project.

Mrs. Kuhn said she was inspired by her daughter's initiative and the generosity of her community members and students from the 79 participating schools in Marin County for the Afghan children they would never meet.

A penny, she explained, is "something that everyone can contribute, whether they're rich or poor or have time or not. It's the smallest denomination in American currency, but as every penny says ‘E Pluribus Unum' -- from many comes one -- from many children of Marin County has come this extremely generous donation."

"It represents what the children of America want for the children of the world. After September 11 we promised to help the innocent people of Afghanistan, and as time goes on we all become involved in so many other things in life, but these children have not forgotten that pledge," she said.

Tori Ulrich, a senior at The Branson School in San Anselma, California, said she helped to organize a school assembly and left cans around the school to collect the pennies from her classmates.

"Everybody at school just totally rallied behind it and brought in tons of pennies and change. You don't think that a penny can make a difference, but they found out it really could," she said.

Ulrich helped her fellow students understand the impact that the 10 million land mines still present in Afghanistan for the lives of ordinary people, explaining many could not walk to school, grow crops, herd cattle.

"The seven million pennies that we raised are actually going to go to Afghanistan. Every single penny counts and so every penny is going to go to de-mining the land in a village just north of Kabul, and then they are going to build a school and a soccer field there so that the students can have a regular life -- one that they've always wanted and one that they deserve, and one that we take for granted every day," said Ulrich.

Amir Maher, a senior at Terra Linda High School and an Afghan-American, said he became involved in the project after Kyleigh and her mother held a fundraiser at his family's restaurant.

He said he was touched by the fact that so many in the community were contributing to eradicate land mines "even though they are not from Afghanistan and they don't have any family from there -- how they really have this passion to make it better."

"It's providing Afghanistan with a future. It's giving the kids and the children and the adults there that lost hope, a new hope," he said.

Maher said Afghanistan was once "one of the most beautiful countries in the world" before it endured 34 years of war. "We want to rebuild that. We want to make it a better place again," he said.