These Kids are CHAMPS!

The cost of training a dog and delivering him or her to a mine-infested country is high: about $20,000. Seem impossible? Not at all! Read on...

After reading in KIND News about the problem of land mines, fourth-grader Bianca Streep took the issue to her parents and teacher Jo Gargaly. They loved the idea of people and dogs working together to make a better world, so they decided to get involved. Amazingly, Bianca and her schoolmates at D.J. Bakie Elementary School in Kingston, New Hampshire raised $20,000 to sponsor a mine detection dog. That's no small feat considering Kingston has a population of just 7,500 people!

In fact, students throughout the U.S. have now provided seven dogs to "sniff out" land mines and save the lives of people and animals through the Marshall Legacy Institute's CHAMPS program.

1. Schoolchildren in Wyoming were the first to join CHAMPS, the        CHildren Against Land Mines Program. They raised money to pay for a dog's training.

"For all our efforts, we got to pick a name for our adopted dog. We thought Wyoming, the name of our home state, was a perfect fit."

2. Apollo (sponsored by the World Geography Class of Apollo Jr. High School in Richardson, Texas) is working in Bosnia.

3. Arizona (sponsored by schoolchildren in the Phoenix area is training in Bosnia.

4. Granite (sponsored by D. J. Bakie Elementary School) is training in Bosnia.

5. Lilo (sponsored by the Michael Lazar family in Charlotte, Vermont) is working in Bosnia.

6. Lipscomb (sponsored by Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee) is working in Azerbaijan.

7. South Hadley (sponsored by 16-year-old Chelsea Fernandes of South Hadley, Massachusetts) is training in Bosnia.

Three other CHAMPS campaigns have nearly completed their fundraising goal to sponsor lifesaving dogs:

1. Browne Academy of Alexandria, Virginia (for a dog named Brownie).

2. Schools in Greenwich, Connecticut (for a dog named Connecticut).

3. Schools in Vermont (for a dog named Vermont).

If you'd like to sponsor a dog through CHAMPS, go to               www.marshall-legacy.org.