Pineland students help purchase solar cookers for women in Darfur

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Vineland, New Jersey, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) July 13, 2011 -- Pineland Learning Center students in grades nine and ten raised $1420 in support of the Jewish World Watch efforts to purchase solar cookers for the women of Darfur.
The students first studied how World War II and the Holocaust led to the creation of international organizations to protect human rights in their US History II classes which is one of the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards.

The goal of the project is to protect refugee women and girls from rape and violence while performing the critical task of collecting firewood for cooking. The refugees must search for wood outside of the camp thereby subjecting them to attack by the Sudanese-supported Janjaweed militia. The Jewish World Watch provides women in the refugee camps with an alternative cooking option: the solar cooker. Solar cookers enable women to remain within the relative safety of the camp by reducing their dependence on wood.

Students at Pineland Learning Center held a car wash, yard sale, and bake sale to raise enough funds to provide about 72 solar cookers for the women in the Oure Cassoni Refugee camp. Each family will receive 2 solar cookers and training. One is used for sorghum, the grain staple distributed meal and the other for sauce, or vegetables.

Environmental Benefits of Solar Cooking:
• In this region, there are 330 days a year of “free” sunlight, perfect for solar cooking.
• Solar cooking reduces the need for firewood for cooking.

• Two solar cookers can save one ton of wood each year.
• Smoke from cooking fires is considered a major cause of global warming.

Jewish World Watch is dedicated to combating genocide and other human rights violations around the world and oversight of the Solar Cooker Project. For information, call (818)501-1836 or email solarcookers@JewishWorldWatch.org.

Pineland Learning Center, with campuses in Carmel and Vineland, is a private, non-sectarian day school educating at-risk students from kindergarten to twelfth grade from Atlantic, Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester, Cape May and Salem Counties. For 30 years, they have designed programs to fulfill the educational, social and emotional needs of their students. The goal of PLC is to help students discover and reach their own level of success. For each and every student that comes through the door, Pineland is a place where they are guaranteed an opportunity to grow as an individual with the support of a staff dedicated to achieving positive and measurable results.

Pineland Learning Center is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and is a member of the National Association of Private Special Education Centers and the New Jersey Based Association of Schools and Agencies Serving the Handicapped. More information is available by calling (856) 378-5020 or on the web at www.pinelandschool.org.