April 27, 2010,
"Children Against Mines Program to Present at GHS" - By Michelle Socher
On Thursday, April 29th, some Greenwich High School students will attend one of two presentations given by speakers from the Marshall Legacy Institute (MLI) and its school-outreach program, Children Against Mines Program (CHAMPS). In just one of its many functions, the Marshall Legacy Institute operates in war-torn countries to assist in the removal of life-threatening landmines. People living in these areas cannot start rebuilding their lives until their neighborhoods are made safe again. Landmines limit access to the arable land that is critical to the lives of individuals in the area and can also restrict their access to any remaining infrastructure. Mines kill men, women and children indiscriminately, and losses due to landmines in war-torn countries are prolific. The MLI, a non-profit, humanitarian organization, works to provide people in landmine-affected countries with the tools and training they need to rebuild their homes. CHAMPS is the auxiliary program of the MLI that gets involved with schools around the country to raise awareness about the proliferation of landmines and their detrimental effect on the lives of thousands of people.
The presentation will be led by two guest speakers from the Marshall Legacy Institute who will talk to the students about the importance of landmine detection and removal in war-torn countries. The focus of the presentation will be on the MLI’s K9 Demining Corps Campaign, a program that works to increase the quantity and quality of mine detection dogs (MDDs) all over the world. These dogs can “sniff-out” the explosives in landmines and can clear mine-affected areas with greater efficiency and safety than any person could, finding landmines ten times faster than a purely human search with even greater accuracy. This detection process is also the safest method thus far conceived; manual landmine detection is a dangerous and life-threatening venture, yet no dog has ever been harmed while sniffing out landmines with their trainers from the Marshall Legacy Institute and CHAMPS.
The Marshall Legacy Institute and CHAMPS purchase, train, and deploy German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois to landmine affected countries. To date, the MLI has donated over 140 of these lifesaving dogs. The Greenwich schools have donated to the MLI in recent years and have assisted in the purchase and training of three mine-detection dogs. In 2005 and later in 2007, the schoolchildren of Fairfield County helped raise money to purchase the dogs Connecticut and Nutmeg, respectively. The New Lebanon Elementary school also held fundraisers and donated to the purchase and training of the detection dog Shadow. Now the MLI hopes to purchase and train a forth dog sponsored in by the Connecticut public schools. In recent years, the CHAMPS presentations have been held only in the elementary schools and some private schools in the area due to the difficulty in arranging large-scale presentations in the middle schools and Greenwich High School. Now, however, CHAMPS will be coming to deliver this powerful presentation to the students of GHS where they hope the students will be as inspired to help with this worthwhile cause as the elementary school students have been. The presenters will show students a video featuring the CHAMPS program on Animal Planet to help demonstrate where landmines are most concentrated and what the MLI does to bring relief to these areas. The presentation will also include a demonstration with the retired landmine detection dog, Utsi, who detected landmines in Africa for five years. A disabled landmine will be hidden in the demonstration area and Utsi will illustrate how she is able to sniff-out these devices under the direction of her trainer. Utsi has given this demonstration multiple times at several of the Greenwich elementary schools and this will give the students a basic idea of just how important and valuable these dogs are in the detection of landmines.
Greenwich High School students are very fortunate to hear from the remarkable speakers from the MLI who will explain what program is about and what can be done to help. The first speaker will be Colonel Baltimore, the President and Executive Director of the Marshall Legacy Institute. He also served in the United States Army for twenty-seven years and thus understands the importance of what the MLI is doing in war-torn countries. Also speaking is Ms. McCasland and her daughter Rachel McCasland. Ms. McCasland is the Director of the Marshall Legacy’s CHAMPS program and she is the handler for the Marshall Legacy’s hero detection dog, Utsi. In her retirement, Utsi travels to schools around the United States with her amazing caretaker, Rachael.
(Michelle Socher is a sophomore at Greenwich High School. She prepared this piece for Teacher Talk.)