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"Adopt-A-Minefield"
Lauren Danielle Garrett
Midlothian High School, Class of 2003
I sat in the school auditorium with a group of my friends, laughing and complaining about how we had too much homework to be sitting here on a school night listening to this presentation. My attitude changed when the lights dimmed and a movie was projected onto the screen in front of me. I wasn’t laughing anymore and I wasn’t thinking about my Biology homework.
The speaker that night was a director from International Baccalaureate North America and she was trying to persuade IB students throughout the country to join together in a community service project, the United Nations Adopt-A-Minefield program. She showed us a video that explained the plight of landmine victims and the horrors that take place every day in countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. I saw young children missing limbs, for no other reason than that they went out into a field to play in a country once ravaged by war. She explained to us that every 20 seconds someone steps on a landmine and these destructive devices cannot distinguish the steps of a soldier from the steps of a child. At the end of the war, the armies take their guns and their men, but they don’t take the landmines. Minefields are extremely expensive to clear, so they are left in unmarked fields, stuck in the ground, until a playing child stumbles upon them.
I was appalled by the death and destruction caused by landmines and was moved to make a difference. That night I decided that I would head up fundraising efforts at my school so that I might help contribute to the costly endeavor of clearing minefields.
The money raised goes to the United Nations Adopt-A-Minefield program, which receives amazing support from Paul and Heather Mills McCartney, and has been extremely successful in clearing minefields and providing aid to landmine victims. The task is not an easy one; it involves a lot of organizing, phone calls, e-mails, pleas for volunteers, teacher support, community involvement, but mostly a lot of passion and a lot of energy. With the help of friends and support from teachers and my community, the fundraising efforts are well underway, including everything from car washes to coin drives, and even raffles for prizes, such as a signed scarf, made by land mine victims, donated by singer songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter.
If the money I raise helps one person buy a prosthetic limb, protects one child from injury, or saves one mother from having to know the pain that comes with the death of a child, then my time and efforts will have been worth it. Deciding to undertake this project has shown me that America’s youth can make a difference in the world. With determination and effort we can help build better, safer lives for ourselves, our communities, and even for people half way around the world in countries stricken by poverty and war, that many of us will never even have the opportunity to visit.
It’s time for America, especially the youth of America to get involved with grass roots action. If nothing else, my work with the United Nations Adopt a Minefield program has shown me that all it takes to make the world a better place is a little effort and a lot of heart.
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