Secretary Powell To Honor Youth Organizers of “Pennies for Peace” Initiative to Clear Afghanistan’s Landmines

Tomorrow, May 20, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will meet at the Department of State with eight student organizers of Roots of Peace’s “Pennies for Peace” campaign to personally thank them for collecting 7 million pennies ($70,000) to clear landmines in Afghanistan. The pennies were collected from students in Marin County, California and elsewhere in the United States and will be matched by $70,000 from an anonymous donor. The initial $70,000 has already been donated to the United Nations Mine Action Service to demine schoolyards and soccer fields in Afghanistan’s Parwan, Kabul and Wardak Provinces.

Susan Brennan, senior administrator of the Branson School in Ross, California, a catalyst school in this initiative, and Heidi Kuhn, founder of Roots of Peace, a California-based non-governmental mine action organization, and mother of Kyleigh Kuhn who initiated and helped organize “Pennies for Peace,” will be present. The “Pennies for Peace” campaign was generously assisted by Cheryl Jennings, an anchor with ABC/KGO Channel 7 News, Loomis Fargo & Company, the Marin Independent Journal, the Marin County Office of Education, the Bank of Marin and A+ Report Card.

Afghanistan has received $88.8 million dollars in humanitarian mine action assistance from the United States Government since 1988, plus mine action aid from other donor nations, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, but continues to suffer from significant landmine and unexploded ordnance infestation. For that reason, the Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which manages the Department’s humanitarian mine action programs in Afghanistan and nineteen other countries, welcomes the involvement of civil society through public-private partnerships and initiatives like “Pennies for Peace” to reinforce mine clearance, mine risk education, and mine survivors assistance.

To learn more about the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs’ humanitarian mine action, small arms and light weapons mitigation, and public-private partnership programs, visit the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement website at www.state.gov/t/pm/wra.

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