To: ramsar-cepa-eng@indaba.iucn.org
Date: Fri 25/07/2003 10:37
Subject: [Ramsar-CEPA-Eng] Pennies for the Planet

Good morning CEPA list members:

Here's a great CEPA campaign from WWF-US that introduces schoolchildren to three threatened habitats, two of them in other parts of the world - the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa and the Atlantic Forest of South America - and the third, the Everglades in South Florida, on home ground. The "Pennies for the Planet" campaign, now in its fourth year of operation, encourages students (and their teachers of course) to get involved in taking action to conserve threatened habitats, each year focusing on different habitats. The Web site, http://www.worldwildlife.org/windows/pennies/, gives plenty of background information on the selected areas and includes on-line activities as well as activities that can be downloaded to help teachers get their students involved. Free posters are available too each year.

Last year's campaign attracted 165 groups, involving more than 15,000 kids from 37 states, the District of Columbia, and 2 other countries who raised over $26,500. The students know that their hard-earned pennies helped the greater one-horned rhinos in Asia's Terai Arc through habitat protection, anti-poaching programs, and other efforts; produced a documentary film on the remarkable biodiversity of the Klamath-Siskiyou Coniferous Forests of Oregon and California; and funded college scholarships for promising high school graduates from the Galápagos Islands who wanted to pursue conservation studies on the Ecuadorian mainland. The funds raised are a great help, of course, to the selected projects but assisting students in understanding conservation issues and encouraging them to take an active role in conservation are really the primary objectives of the campaign.

Best weekend wishes,

Sandra Hails, Ramsar Bureau

**************************************************************

Sandra Hails, Senior Communications Assistant
The Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971)
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176
Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
Outreach mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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