Students and Community Raise $20,000 for Landmine Detection Dog
With just a few days left in the school year, the Seven Lakes High School Interact Club announced that they have reached their goal of raising $20,000 to sponsor a landmine detection dog for the CHAMPS organization. Seven Lakes Interact Club members have been working hard throughout the year to create fundraising activities for this effort and, having received support from local businesses, Morton Ranch High School students, and students from Dulles High School in Fort Bend ISD, their dog Spartacus will soon be headed across the globe to work in minefields.
“The determination of Seven Lakes High School students, with support from our local community, proves that we really can make a difference,” says Jessica Postlethwaite, Seven Lakes teacher and Interact Club co-sponsor. “Thanks to our combined efforts, Spartacus will find forgotten landmines and help the people of Sri Lanka to put their civil war behind them and live safe, productive lives.”
Last October, CHAMPS Director Kimberly McCasland visited students at Seven Lakes and talked with them about the importance of finding landmines in mine contaminated countries across the globe. During the presentation she introduced Utsi, a 10-year-old Belgian Malinois and CHAMPS Canine Ambassador, who demonstrated how CHAMPS dogs find landmines.
“Every half hour, someone falls victim to a landmine,” says McCasland. “Forty percent of landmine victims are under the age of 15.”
Seven Lakes teachers and Interact Club co-sponsors Angele Fowler and Postlethwaite, along with students and Interact officers Tanisha Kashikar and Louise Goodfellow, visited Global Training Academy in Somerset, Texas to select Spartacus, a German shepherd from the Netherlands, who responds to verbal commands in Dutch. Spartacus will be deployed to Sri Lanka in June, where he will work hard to find landmines left during the civil war that ended in 2010. Postlethwaite will be travelling to Sri Lanka this summer to see Spartacus at work.
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