The Pennies for Peace organization at Missouri Southern began as a class assignment, but it wasn’t the students who did the project that made it take off.

Dr. Ann Wyman, associate professor of political science, assigned her international relations class to choose a book to read from a list. A group of four people chose the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

“After they read it then they are to share its significance to international relations with the rest of the class,” Wyman said. “As this panel was sharing, people got excited about the idea of a regular person creating such a significant program one step at a time.”

Sony Yang, senior international studies major, was one of the students who read Three Cups of Tea and presented the information to the class. She said Mortenson went to climb the highest mountain in the region because he wanted to place a necklace, given to him by his dying sister, on top of the mountain.

“He never fully summits because he gets amnesia,” Yang said. “He is then found by the chief of a tribe and they take him in and they let him heal and he gets to know the people and he gets to know the customs and he really likes it there. Before he leaves he wants to know where the school is, so he asks the chief.

“The chief takes him to this hill where he sees 84 children on the ground keeling, they have no building for a school and no teacher. He promises to come back and build a school for them.”

Students heard and began this organization to raise money and initially they send about $600 to Mortenson to go ahead and build a school. One of the students listening was inspired.

“They brought up the idea of Pennies for Peace program to help build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan just to further education down there because down there education is pretty difficult,” said Nathan Hicks, junior political science major. “This program is a small, little charity thing that can be done to promote education.”

When the group gave its presentation, they asked students if they had donated to the charity.

“I thought, ‘you know what? A little program implemented like that wouldn’t be hard to do,'” Hicks said. “I went to the group after class.”

The group got together and asked Wyman for help.

“The idea of education is not foreign to a university setting, but it was something that a non-professional was able to do-creating these schools in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan,” she said. “They thought that sounded like not only a really good cause but a cause that Missouri Southern with its international mission would be well suited for. They asked me to help with the campaign so I said yes.”

The group has started a campaign to raise as much money as it can between the dates of Oct. 3 and Oct. 16.

Any additional information can be found at www.ikat.org. Questions can be sent to [email protected].