Walk for Champs

Walk to Raise Money for
CHAMPS

 Fifth Grade students from North Mianus
Elementary in Greenwich have organized a dog walk to raise money and awareness
for the CHAMPS organization. 
CHAMPS, The Children Against Mines Program, is a student-lead program of
The Marshall Legacy Institute, a non-profit, international organization.  The goal of the program is to protect
people in mine-affected countries by training detection dogs to sniff out
landmines for safe removal. 
Landmines are an extremely dangerous threat.  One thousand people are involved in landmine accidents every
month, roughly one victim every 40 minutes.  Most victims are killed.

This is the third year North Mianus students
have organized a dog walk to raise money for CHAMPS. Students were motivated to
help CHAMPS after
reading articles during a reading unit about innocent children who were injured
or even killed due to landmines. Their fundraising work over the past 2 years
has resulted in the funding of "Hawk", a mine detection dog currently
serving in Iraq. The
cost of acquiring, training, and delivering a certified mine detection dog to a
contaminated country is approximately $20,000. 

This year, North Mianus has teamed up with The
International School at Dundee to host the walk.  The walk will be on Sunday morning, March 30th, from
9:00 – 12:00. Community members are encouraged to attend the walk, rain or
shine, and stroll around the two mile trail learning facts about landmines and
mine detection dogs. There will also be games for children. There is a
suggested donation of $10. If community members would like to help support CHAMPS,
but are unable to attend the walk, checks (made out to the Marshall Legacy Institute)
or cash can be delivered to North Mianus School.