Students mount fund drive, buy land,
save trees in Belize

By PAT NEWMAN
pnewman@thecititzennews.com

Pennies equal property to Huddleston Elementary School students.

With the collection of $670.08 culled from hand-painted milk jug banks found in every classroom, the children can add to their land holdings of more than 40 acres of rain forest.

For more than five years, Lynda Fields, an enrichment teacher at Huddleston, has spearheaded the coin collection and taught students about the ecological importance of the rain forest.

“What people don't realize is that rain forests produce huge amounts of oxygen and purify the earth's air. Also, two-thirds of all the fresh, flowing water on earth is stored in rainforests,” Fields said.

The Adopt-an-Acre program is sponsored by The Nature Conservancy. This year's “save” is the Maya Mountain Marine Corridor in Belize. Since the program's inception in 1991, American students have raised $5 million to adopt 150,000 acres of rain forest at nine sites in Latin America.

In addition to the penny drive, students also collected at least 10 bags of aluminum cans. Sweet Rewards Recycling Center in Fayetteville is sponsoring a county-wide contest with the first place class receiving $100 for its efforts.

“We think our school could have a good chance of winning since we have the tradition of doing this every year,” Fields said.