Pennies

equal property to Huddleston Elementary School

students.

With

the collection of $670.08 culled from

hand-painted milk jug banks found in every

classroom, the children can add to their land

holdings of more than 40 acres of rain forest.

For

more than five years, Lynda Fields, an enrichment

teacher at Huddleston, has spearheaded the coin

collection and taught students about the

ecological importance of the rain forest.

"What

people don't realize is that rain forests produce

huge amounts of oxygen and purify the earth's

air. Also, two-thirds of all the fresh, flowing

water on earth is stored in rainforests,"

Fields said.

The

Adopt-an-Acre program is sponsored by The Nature

Conservancy. This year's "save" is the

Maya Mountain Marine Corridor in Belize. Since

the program's inception in 1991, American

students have raised $5 million to adopt 150,000

acres of rain forest at nine sites in Latin

America.

In

addition to the penny drive, students also

collected at least 10 bags of aluminum cans.

Sweet Rewards Recycling Center in Fayetteville is

sponsoring a county-wide contest with the first

place class receiving $100 for its efforts.

"We

think our school could have a good chance of

winning since we have the tradition of doing this

every year," Fields said.

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