By Maria Prato-Gaines, Staff Writer
CRANBURY A group of young girls huddled around a makeshift cardboard check that read “$1,000” at a Shadow Oaks home Monday afternoon.
This “girls summer reading club” spent months having crafts and bake sales and extracting bills and change from friends, family and parents with a dual purpose: to raise money and to teach their loved ones that even a penny has the power to change lives.
”Pennies for Peace teaches children the rewards of sharing and working together to bring hope and educational opportunities to children in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” their collection buckets read. “A penny in the United States is virtually worthless, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a penny buys a pencil and opens the door to literacy.”
The girls found their cause while reading the children’s version of “Three Cups of Tea,” a book by Greg Mortenson. In the book, Mr. Mortenson retraces his journey to Pakistan where he stumbled across an isolated village with school children who sketched their daily lessons with sticks and dirt.
Seeing these conditions, Mr. Mortenson began a campaign to help bring education in the form of walls, books and pencils to some of the more impoverished students of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
”We take advantage of our education,” said book club member Emily Kinney of Cranbury. “We can go to school for free, and we don’t even think about it.”
”It also seemed like they were happy with what they had,” added Cranbury resident Emily Brown, a fellow book club member.
Although the story is plagued with struggle, its overall message of hope is what rings truest to these girls.
”Even when things are sometimes bad, they can always get better,” Hopewell resident Allison Willick said, echoing the deeper meaning.
With their own collection of pennies and hope, the book club plans to present its check to Mr. Mortenson in person when the Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author makes a presentation at the Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton today (Friday).
Eventually, the money will make its way to the Central Asia Institute, an international community-based organization that focuses on education, especially for young girls.
As of 2009, Central Asia Institute has successfully established 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide or have provided education to more than 51,000 students, the organization’s Web site said.
These nine sixth-graders have been meeting about five times each summer thumbing through as many as five books during their vacation.
A mix of private and public-school students, these bookworms hail from different parts of the region the bulk from Cranbury, but some travelling from as far away as Piscataway, Robbinsville and Hopewell.
Member Kendra Sullivan, a Cranbury resident who attends Rutgers Preparatory School in Somerset, founded the book club in the third grade, inviting classmates, neighbors and family friends.
”They choose most of the books,” said Patria Sullivan, Kendra’s mom and the book club’s organizer. “They’re big readers. I think they enjoy the social aspect of it, too.”
