May 24th, 2001<BR>
History Lesson at US School Leads to Large Net Donation<BR>
By Brian Calvert, The Cambodia Daily<BR>
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Students at the Denn John Middle School in Orlando, in the US<BR>
state of Florida, and their teacher, Lauren Steiert, count money<BR>
they collected for the Cambodia Daily Mosquito Net Campaign.<BR>
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	What began as a middle school lesson on World War II for 
students in the US state of Florida ended in a coin-collecting 
campaign that may have saved the lives of more than 200 rural 
Cambodians.
	Students at the Denn John Middle School in Orlando, 
Florida, were supposed to be studying the effects of Nazi leader 
Adolf Hitler's policies and the Holocaust that killed more than 6 
million Jews, explained middle school teacher Lauren Steiert in a 
recent e-mail to the Cambodia Daily Mosquito Net Campaign.
	But one of the students who was searching the Internet for 
material about refugees came across the struggles of Cambodians 
still in refugee camps. The discovery led to the decision by the 
class to move history into the present, Steiert explained.
	Her students decided to work together to scrape up as many 
pennies the lowest denomination of money in the US as possible 
and send them to the Campaign, she said.
	The students collected, counted, and rolled pennies to 
purchase life-saving mosquito nets for Cambodians to protect them 
from malaria, she said. 
	The students looked everywhere: friends, family, teachers, 
and other classes from other schools all pitched in all the 
change they could, she said. 
	As a result, the students saved almost $370 and saved 221 
lives, she said. Each $5 net offers protection to an average of 
three people.
	The money was forwarded to the Campaign this week, and will 
go toward the purchase of mosquito nets. 
	The nets, distributed by the government's National Malaria 
Center, protect families from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which 
bite at night.
	And not only did the project end up helping Cambodians, it 
helped students in the US become more involved in school. Parents 
reported more students doing homework, while the number of 
absentees for the month of May plummeted. Fewer conflicts within 
the schools were reported, Steiert said.
	And the students learned more about the world around them, 
she said. In fact, I offered to give them a pizza party, and one 
little boy said, Wouldn't it be better to give the pizza money to 
the Cambodians? They need it more than we do.'