Mine field demonstration gives Napa kids a scary lesson, Napa Valley Register

Hayden Stone reflected on kids his age who live in the war-ravaged country of Afghanistan, where hundreds of hidden landmines lie inches beneath fields and playgrounds. One misstep could be fatal.

Many of them can't even walk to school without passing precariously close to the explosives, said the 11-year-old Blue Oak School student. "I wouldn't want to live anywhere were I couldn't walk outside without worrying."

That's why Stone has decided to help. This week, he and his classmates at Blue Oak joined a national student-based initiative to collect pennies for clearing unexploded ordinances and landmines from areas frequented by kids in Afghanistan.

The program, Making Change Work - Collecting Pennies for Peace, started in Marin one year ago as a branch of Roots of Peace. With many local vintners involved, Roots of Peace turns mine-riddled fields into agricultural lands.

An estimated 110 million landmines are scattered around the world, according to Roots of Peace. It only costs $3 to $30 to produce and plant a landmine, but up to $1,000 to remove one. Some of the devices can stay active for up to 50 years.

"It's scary to know that a 2-year-old could get away from their parents, and die," said William Pannetier, a Blue Oak sixth-grader. And imagine if some older kids dared their friends to cross a field that they knew had landmines in it, he added.

Each year landmines maim or kill roughly 26,000 people, mostly women and children. The issue became prominent in the 1990s when the late Princess Diana made it one of her top priorities.

"They don't take a lot of pressure to set off," said Kurt Chesko, of HALO Trust, who showed students on Thursday afternoon how workers find the devices. The HALO Trust is a nonprofit based in England that's working on eradicating mines globally.

Wearing protective gear, Chesko searched a small patch of land methodically, using a highly-sensitive metal detector and keeping track of the small sections he had inspected. When the metal detector beeped, he used small garden tools to gently remove dirt to search for the small explosive he had planted earlier.

HALO workers use red arrows to mark where they find the explosives, and other workers later detonate them.

"It's a really dangerous job, but it has to be done," Chesko said. HALO has cleared more than 1.7 million landmines in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Somalia, Kosovo and elsewhere.

Of its 5,400 employees, only 40 are westerners. The rest are local people who are paid above-average wages to work for the company, Chesko said.

All of the money raised through Making Change Work goes toward removing landmines, and none of it is for administrative costs, according to Roots of Peace. Last year, 7 million pennies were collected.

"This is just a chance to do our part to overcome this plague," said Raffi Mardirosian, a Marin teen who's promoting the program in the Bay Area. "We are so privileged in Marin and Napa. We must do our part to help others have the same opportunities we have."

Roots of Peace has launched campaigns to create agricultural lands in Croatia, Serbia, Afghanistan and Cambodia. Converting mine-filled land to wheat fields along the Iraq-Iran border is in the works.

One part of the organization is dedicated to turning "mines into vines" for fruit, raisins or wines. Several Blue Oak students are the children of vintners who are supporters.