Students Help Children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, One Penny At A Time

Students in New Providence School District have been raising funds for the Pennies for Peace campaign since Jan. 18.

In 2009, students joined the campaign with other students around New Jersey and the world to raise money that helps build and sustain schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This year’s campaign ends on Thursday, March 31.

“Pennies for Peace supports the work of the Central Asia Institute… an organization formed by Greg Mortenson, who is the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into School,” said Judy Gallagher, a Librarian at the New Providence High School and Middle School, and one of the coordinators for the Pennies for Peace campaign.

According to Mortenson’s biography on the Central Asia Institute website, he climbed Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range, in 1993 in honor of his sister, Christa, who died in July of 1992 after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy.

“While recovering from the climb in a village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school,” according to his biography on the Central Asia Institute's website. “From that rash promise, grew a humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Gallagher said it was through the help of Mortenson’s mother that the Pennies for Peace campaign came to fruition.

“[Pennies for Peace] basically started because Greg Mortenson’s mother was an elementary school principal [in River Fall, WI] and she started the whole idea of children could donate pennies because it’s something they can collect and that’s where it started [in 1994],” Gallagher said.

According to the Pennies for Peace website, the students at Westside Elementary School, where Mortenson’s mother was principal, were able to raise 62,340 pennies to assist Greg with building his first school in Pakistan.

"From that seminal experience, Greg realized that he had two missions: one, to help children in Pakistan and Afghanistan have access to education where it never existed before; and two, to broaden and enrich education where it existed in the developed world so that students have the opportunity to become more educated, global citizens," according to the Pennies for Peace website. "Since those early days, Pennies for Peace has grown into a program that encompass thousands of schools and tens-of-thousands of students around the world."

Gallagher said the campaign started in New Jersey two years ago by the New Jersey State Library to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to peace through education.

“Every year since, schools and libraries in New Jersey have all taken their donations and contributed them to one donation from the state,” Gallagher said. “So the last two years the state has run it, New Providence donated the most money of any community of libraries that participated.

“We did it through the schools and the [. The first year, I think we raised roughly $3,200 and the next year, it was almost $4,000. So we’re trying to do our best this year and see if we can do a repeat, but we’ll raise whatever we can and we’re going out to businesses this time, which we did not do before.”

Gallagher said students in the undertook the role of expanding the campaign to businesses around the borough, putting up postings and placing cans at businesses, handing out information, and mailing letters to business owners and corporate entities in the borough.

“Some of our homerooms have adopted businesses, particularly where their parents work. We have a Coppola in our school so he took [a can] to and is donating whatever comes in there to his homeroom collection,” Gallagher said. “Then, we have other students who basically take on events and collect money at concerts, the Prom Fashion Show, that kind of thing. The elementary students are doing their thing and we had a couple students donate quite a large sum of money they collected in terms of gift money, either from Christmas or their birthdays.”

Gallagher said there are not any door-to-door collections, but students found other ways of collecting funds.

“Some of them have talked to their parents and their parents have agreed to take cans to businesses outside of New Providence where they work,” she said. “Last year, we had a gift from an employer of one of the parents of $500. That was nice. Especially when parents have read the book, they get really excited about it.”

The also played an integral role in the campaign since it began in New Providence in 2009.

“We have a canister on the circulation desk with some literature,” said Colleen Byrne, the Director of New Providence Memorial Library. “[Judy Gallagher is] in the school environment so it’s a limited environment only to the students and faculty. She gets the literature and supplies, and shares them with us and we have that extra dimension because anyone in the community can come in and have access to it, and they can also read about it, maybe stumble upon it because they didn’t know about it.”

Byrne said the library’s collection is combined with the school district’s tally.

“I think it’s for a very good cause, but we are a public library and it’s one of the only things we would collect money for because there are so many good causes in the area… and we couldn’t do that all the time,” Byrne said.

Mortenson is co-author of the #1 NY Times Best Seller Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace, One School At A Time, which recounts his journey from when he attempted to climb Pakistan’s K2 to when he was able to establish schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to the Central Asia Institute website. His other book, Stones into School: Promoting Peace with Books, not Bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, picks up where his last book left off in 2003.

Gallagher said the children’s version, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World, One Child at a Time, was read to students at Allen W. Roberts and Salt Brook Elementary Schools by librarians to help students understand the campaign and how they can help.

According to the school district’s website, a penny may not buy much in New Providence, but it can help children in Pakistan and Afghanistan tremendously.

The district listed the following figures of what pennies can buy for these children:

• 1 penny = a pencil
• 2-3 pennies = an eraser
• 15 pennies = one notebook
• $20 = child’s school supplies for one year
• $50 = treadle sewing machine and supplies
• $100 = maternal healthcare supplies for one year
• $300 = one advanced students annual scholarship
• $600 = one teachers annual salary
• $6,000 = support for existing school for one year
• $50,000 = one school building and support for up to five years

Do you want to help New Providence with the Pennies for Peace campaign?

Time is limited, as the campaign ends on Thursday, March 31. Anyone interested in donating to the Pennies for Peace campaign can do so by placing money or a check in one of the collection cans at the library or at businesses in New Providence, or by sending a check to:

Pennies for Peace

New Providence High School

35 Pioneer Drive, New Providence, NJ 07974

Attention: Judy Gallagher, Librarian

Note: Please address checks to “NPHS Student Activities Fund” with “Pennies for Peace” in the memo line.