Children Gather Tons of Pennies for Charity

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penniesThere is a tradition that each year children from participating schools in the New York City gather pennies from their family and friends. Afterwards the collected pennies do not go to piggy banks but are stored in one place where they are trucked to the so-called Penny Harvest Field, which is a huge penny-holding construction located at Rockefeller Center.

 

There children can enjoy the massiveness of their collective efforts and understand the real effect of hard work made together. Their endeavor will pay off for charities which children will select by themselves.

 

An incomplete list of Penny Harvest Field achievements:

  • Children have donated $5.9 million in grants since 1991;
  • Since 1991, more than a million children have donated about a billion pennies, making over 9,000 grants and contributing 20 million service hours;
  • Throughout the drive of 2006, children gathered $7,113,394, which is 71 million pennies that have a total weight of more than 200 tons. The children picked 1,460 cash grants to donate to 850 different community organizations;

 

Besides collecting pennies for charity, a lot of Penny Harvest children contribute by being involved in service projects.

 

The Penny Harvest Field opened on December 10, 2007 at the Rockefeller Center, which is between 50th and 51st Streets. It will operate from 9am to 9pm until Dec. 31.

 

The elimination of penny may affect charities?

One of the polls on the net included a question whether the U.S. penny should be eliminated. About 45 percent of the respondents said that there is no need for a penny. It is worth mentioning that currently the penny is costs the government about 1.7-1.8 cents to make.

 

According to an inflation calculator an item purchased in 1913 for one penny is today valued at 21 cents. Thus we can point out that the cent might have outlived its usefulness.

 

But the most interesting question refers to the charitable programs that involve pennies. For example would the Penny Harvest Field have any success in case pennies are eliminated?

 

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