TENAFLY STUDENTS RAISE $18,000 TO CLEAR MINES IN BOSNIAN VILLAGE

By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer

TENAFLY, N.J. (AP) _ It was the little things that brought home the enormity of the global tragedy: risking your life to walk to and from school, not being able to play outside, watching pets blown to pieces by buried land mines.

Mortified by what they learned in an after-school club about anti-personnel devices, students at Tenafly Middle School decided to act. They've raised $18,000 to help clear the planet of land mines, $15,000 of which is going to a tiny Bosnian village to help make life a little better for its children.

Impressed by the kids' tenacity and conviction, the U.S. State Department agreed to match their donation, and soon the village of Podzvizd will get $30,000 to remove mines, courtesy of some globally minded students in Bergen County.

"There are kids who walk home every day on these paths through mine fields, and they're in danger every day," said Jian Lann Chang, 13. "They're kids just like us. They're far away, but we still care about them. If something happens to them, it's like something happening to us. They go to school, they play, things we all do."

The students decided to get involved after participating in a Human Rights Day two years ago, said their moderator, teacher Mark Hyman. Their concerns grew into a project called "Heroes Of Conscience," which in turn spawned the Land Mine Removal Initiative.

Why, the kids were asked, did they take on a social project to address a social situation thousands of miles away instead of just worrying about themselves, hanging out at the mall or playing video games?

"You look at the world, and you see so much suffering," said Michael Baumstein, 14. "If you can help, why not do it? Kids our age don't have many chances to change the world. It's something you don't let go of lightly."

Led by program director Ashley Woolsey, 14, and communications director Brett Fieldstein, 17, they began hitting up local governments, businesses, civic and religious groups for donations. Only one said no.

Part of the program involved selling paper butterflies, representing a particularly insidious kind of anti-personnel mine called "the butterfly" because of its shape. It detonates when picked up _ often by a child _ blowing off hands or entire arms.

Sitting cross-legged on mats on the floor of Hyman's class, the students reeled off a litany of grim statistics about land mines: Every 22 minutes worldwide, someone is killed or injured by one. Thirty-five percent to 40 percent of those killed by mines are children. Bosnia-Herzegovinia has an average of 152 land mines per square mile. It costs $300 to $1,000 to remove a single land mine, but just $3 to plant it in the ground.

Champion Glazer, 11, knew little about land mines until he saw a display at school of a fake minefield with warning flags set up all around it. The more he learned, the more disturbed he became.

"It was a real tragedy because people there are deprived of things we take for granted, like going to school or being able to play outside," he said. "It was difficult not to do something after seeing these things about survivors who had terrible accidents."

One such child, a Nicaraguan amputee named Julio Perez, came to visit the students.

"He was hunting with his dog, and he poked at a land mine," said Ben Gallagher, 11. "Half of his arm was blown off, and his vision was taken. He has lots of scars on his face."

Three 12-year-old girls in the group, Alison Leung, Jessica Kraus, and Rachel Baumstein, focused on the toll land mines take on animals.

"It's sad how animals get killed for something they haven't done," Leung said. "They don't participate in wars, but they die because of it."

Kraus said half of all the animals in Afghanistan have been killed by mines sewn during fighting with Russian troops in the late 1970s and early
1980s.

The aid will be distributed through the Slovenian International Trust Fund, a group that matches private donations with government funds from around the world to pay for mine-clearing operations in the Balkans.

They suggested Podzvizd, a village of about 3,000 people in northwest Bosnia. In that country alone, there are an estimated 1 million mines scattered in 30,000 minefields. Worldwide, there are about 110 million mines in the ground, according to the State Department.

Hyman is proud of what the students have accomplished and hopes they will inspire others to act as well.

"Children's moral voices can be very powerful," he said.

The remaining $3,000 the students raised will be put toward a future project that's yet to be decided.