Sanborn schools keep up Bosnian connections

by Meghan Carey

What started as a fourth-grade project to adopt a mine-sniffing dog has grown to encompass the entire Sanborn school district community and students in Bosnia.

Freshmen in Chris Citorik's Citizens in a Global Society classes at Sanborn Regional High School were visited yesterday by Perry Baltimore, president of the Marshall Legacy Institute. He presented students with a webcam so they can correspond with students their age in Bosnia.

Sanborn's tie to Bosnia began two years ago, when fourth-grader Bianca Scanlon started a campaign at D.J. Bakie Elementary School to raise $20,000 to adopt a Belgian Malinois dog through the institute's spin-off CHAMPS | Children Against Mines Program.

Nearly 1 million mines are still buried in Bosnia from the civil war more than 10 years ago.

The district took up her cause, and penny drives at the high school and middle school contributed to Bianca's successful fundraising efforts, her mother, Beth, said yesterday.

Now that the dog, named Granite, has been trained and dispatched to Bosnia, the group's efforts have shifted.

"Our focus is to raise funds for a survivor to get prosthetics," Beth Scanlon said yesterday.

Citorik's class will check in with students in Bosnia monthly through webcam and e-mail to learn about each others' lives and talk about fundraising efforts, locally and in Bosnia.

Baltimore said many high school students in Bosnia dress the same as Sanborn students and have the same desires in life. That's why they were inspired by Sanborn's efforts to adopt the dog, he said.

The Bosnian students decided to help people in their own country by raising money for survivors of land-mine explosions, he said.

Locally, an electronics recycling fundraiser will be held at D.J. Bakie School Saturday, May 19, to raise money for prosthetics for children in Bosnia. People can dispose of their old TVs and other electronics for $5 that day.

The items will be recycled and all of the money will go toward the prosthetics program.