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Click Speaker for a Message From Lt. Melissa |
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Thank you for visiting the Pencils For Peace website. Pencils for Peace is an outreach effort created by United States Air Force Lieutenant Melissa Stevens and her sister, Cynthia Walker, of Plano, Texas.
The sisters saw the great need in Afghanistan and together they began asking America for help to provide school supplies for the children of Afghanistan; children who have known war, poverty and very little opportunity for education for the last 30 years. Please read the following letter from Lt. Stevens, and the other information provided on this site. Then join in to spread the word to friends, family and colleagues, and collect and ship urgently needed supplies to help Afghanistan build a future of peace, prosperity and education. To Whom This May Concern: My name is Lt. Melissa Stevens, and recently I was deployed as a member of the Jalalabad Provincial Reconstruction Team in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. The mission of the PRT is to help the Afghan people rebuild their nation after more than 30 years of war, and I’m hoping you and your school would be willing to help us continue what we’ve started. The PRT has gone through and continues to see many of the schools in villages throughout the province. Consistently, we found the same problems. In almost every single instance, the ratio of children to teachers is more than 70 to one, and there are only six to ten classrooms in the entire school. Another critical problem is school supplies. School children don’t have pencils, pens, notebooks, textbooks, or anything else. Most often we find teachers lecturing under a tree in 120-degree heat, and none of the children have materials to take notes or have actual books to read from. This is where we began more than a year ago to challenge the kids in America to help the kids in Afghanistan. We started an Adopt-An-Afghan-School-Campaign & Pen-Pal Program for children in Afghanistan with the help of children from your school. Letters to the children would be wonderful and any assistance with school supplies would be very much appreciated as well. Afghan children have no concept of how life is in North America, and it's difficult for them to imagine how things could be better and how they can be the ones to change things for their country. I believe talking to students from the U.S. would broaden their understanding of how they can improve their world. I completed my deployment to the PRT and have since returned back to my duty station in New Mexico. However, I look to forward to keeping the momentum we’ve got so far and continue supporting the children in Afghanistan. Fortunately, MSgt. Dean Miller was my replacement at the PRT and he continues to hand out the supplies with the same enthusiasm and motivation. Dean also keeps us informed of the needs in Jalalabad city and Nangarhar Province and keeps us stocked with photos from the distributions. If you and your students are interested in helping continue this program in Nangarhar Province, please let me know. Please feel free to email me at melissajstevens@hotmail.com, or my sister Cynthia Walker at Thank you very much for your time and your help. Sincerely, Mailing address for all donated supplies:
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While Lt. Stevens was stationed in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, as part of a Provincial Reconstruction Team she worked with local organizations to rebuild schools and create community-based organizations critical to the redevelopment of Afghan society.
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