Submitted by The Fort Plain Free Library.
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The Fort Plain Free Library offers area residents the opportunity to participate in the Central Asia Institute’s worldwide Pennies for Peace campaign running through the end of March, 2010.
Pennies for Peace helps well-known author Greg Mortenson promote peace through education by building schools and libraries, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The program began in 1994 in Wisconsin at which time students collected 62,340 pennies to help Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones Into Schools”, build his very first school in Pakistan.
How can a penny bring peace? It doesn’t buy much in Fort Plain. But in the villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it can buy a pencil, start an education, and transform a life. In a region where terrorist organizations recruit uneducated, illiterate children, that penny can help to empower a child to read, write, learn, and think for himself. The pennies that are collected can add up to make a real difference.
1 penny = a pencil
2-3 pennies = an eraser
15 pennies = one notebook
$20 = one child’s school supplies for one year
$50 = one treadle sewing machine and supplies
$100 = maternal healthcare supplies for one year
$300 = one advanced student’s annual scholarship
$600 = one teacher’s annual salary
$5,000 = support for existing school for one year
$50,000 = one school building and support for up to five years.
Children in over 400 mountain villages in remote northern Pakistan and Afghanistan are on the waiting list, hoping to learn in a new school. The Pennies for Peace project hopes to help build a bridge of peace, one penny at a time, offering alternatives to the cycle of terrorism and war.
The Central Asia Institute is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes and provides community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Central Asia. CAI has built, to date, nearly 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which serve more than 28,000 students, 14,000 of whom are girls.
Mortenson’s story and more information about CAI can be found on the web at www.ikat.org. By dropping off loose change in the receptacle available at the library, residents can become a part of a national library effort to help create schools and libraries for children who have none and often have no books at all. For further information, please call the Fort Plain Free Library during regular library hours at (518) 993-4646.
Tags: Fort Plain, Fundraiser, Montgomery County
