2013 csp - "it's a plarn party" mats for uganda

It’s a Plarn Party!

A Venus High School Community Service Project

Venus, TX

Prepared by Merry Dimanh, Genesis Bobadilla, and Mireya Arzola-Mendoza

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Table of Contents

Statement of Purpose ................................................................................................................. 4

Statement of Chapter Goals ............................................................................................ 5 Service to the Community and its Citizens ....................................................................... 6

Planning and Development ......................................................................................................... 7

Steps to Implementation ........................................................................................................... 10

How to Make Plarn ........................................................................................................ 13

Impacts and Benefits................................................................................................................. 16

Evidence of Publicity ................................................................................................................. 18

Plarn Party – June 3, 2012 ............................................................................................ 18

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF – October 31, 2012 .............................................................. 19

Plarn Party – November 30, 2012 .................................................................................. 21

Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 23

Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 24

Appendix A: Global MNT Statistics ................................................................................ 25 Appendix B: UNICEF Trick or Treat Report .................................................................. 26 Appendix C: National Geographic News ........................................................................ 27 Appendix D: MNT Elimination Initiative .......................................................................... 30 Appendix E: Acknowledgements ................................................................................... 31

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“It’s a Plarn Party!”

Venus High School FBLA Community Service Project

Statement of Purpose

“Allow impoverished families the chance to lead the healthy lives they deserve.”

Initiated by Kiwanis International and UNICEF in 2010, the ELIMINATE Project aims to

immunize over 100 million mothers in countries with poor living conditions to completely wipe

maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) from the face of the earth by 2015. For concomitant

support, Mats for Uganda, a non-profit organization that started as a partnership between two

ministries in Missouri, crochets birthing mats to provide healthier conditions for mothers and

their babies for birth.

With birthing mats made of plarn (plastic yarn), mothers in Uganda will have the sterile

birthing conditions so their babies will not contract the disease. MNT causes the deaths of

almost 60,000 innocent children in both Africa and Asia, with a 100% fatality rate if contracted

and not treated professionally in a hospital, and even then, the rates range from 10% to 60%.

Appendix A includes more vital statistics and pertinent information to ELIMINATE.

Despite the high fatality rates, MNT is not a terminal disease—it is easily preventable

through immunizations and sterile, safe birthing practices during and after childbirth that

otherwise cannot be procured by poor countries. Access to hospitals in poorer parts of Africa

and Asia are also hard to come by, meaning that the patients who are most in need of treatment

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will not make it. Every mother should have the chance to hold her baby and see it grow into a

beautiful, healthy child.

That is why, for the last two years, our Chapter has committed hundreds of hours and

effort in order to contribute to the global $110 million goal that Kiwanis International and

UNICEF has set in order to fund enough immunizations for over 100 million mothers across the

globe. This effort, along with Mats for Uganda, will eliminate MNT for good.

Chapter Goals for It’s a Plarn Party Service Project

Before we could make progress with our project, our Chapter defined several goals we

wanted to accomplish by taking initiative:

Raise funds to support the ELIMINATE Project reach its donation goal of $110 million in order to immunize mothers all over the globe for MNT. One immunization costs

Allow less fortunate mothers to practice safe birthing practices by providing sterile birthing mats made out of plarn.

Bring about awareness of the dangers of MNT and what the community can do to help to prevent this disease.

Unite the community to dedicate hours of service to work against worldly challenges, such as eliminating MNT and allowing young children the chance to survive.

Educate the community about the importance of keeping plastic bags from piling up in landfills and donating them to the Mats for Uganda cause.

Allow community members a recycling collection place to dispense plastic bags at their convenience.

Congregate members of the community together in order to formally host “plarn parties” with prizes for incentives.

Collecting plastic bags all over the Venus community by having a plastic bag drives.

Hold workshops for community members to both learn and teach how to make balls of plastic yarn and crochet the plarn into mats.

Deliver finished mats to missionaries planning to depart to Uganda within the coming months.

Save the lives of thousands of babies and mothers from the dangers of MNT.

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Protect the connection between a mother and her child that all mothers and children deserved to have.

Spread awareness of MNT, its dangers to both the mothers and babies, and how all citizens can play a part in eliminating this preventable disease, everywhere.

Service to the Community and Citizens

The Venus Chapter, along with our local Key Club organization, paired up to send mass

invitations to the community via promotional campaign over the summer to meet up at the high

school to make Mats for Uganda, recycle plastic bags by using them in a productive way, and

inform citizens about the dangers of maternal and neonatal tetanus, the environmental impact of

plastic bags and other plastic products, and how their efforts to help up cycle plastic bags into

mats and eliminate MNT will be appreciated by mothers and children all over the world.

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Planning and Development

The Venus Chapter would like to take part in the battle against worldly challenges that

Third World countries, as well as countries currently facing poor health conditions, by joining

forces with the local Key Club, a Kiwanis International subsidiary, by promoting awareness of

maternal and neonatal tetanus, the benefits of recycling plastic bags, and raising donation

money for the ELIMINATE Project. Inspired by local ministries in their efforts to put together

birthing mats made of plarn, the Venus Chapter discussed ways in which we could put forth our

numbers and help put together more mats.

Formulating a plan. During club meetings, officers and members alike shared ideas on

how to plan out this project and came up with the following:

Host community-wide plarn parties at the school cafeteria to ensure that there would be enough space for at least 200 people.

Officers must inform the school administration of these events and the dates in which they will happen.

FBLA and Key Club officers will present letters of request in writing for the organizations to host community-targeted events on school property to receive the school administration’s approval as per district policy.

During the plarn parties, all members will show community members

how to make plarn, and members who know how to crochet will teach others who are eager to learn how to crochet, as well.

Ensure maximum participation by allowing at least two weeks’ notice before the confirmed date of each plarn party, and looking ahead for fixed dates of conflict (such as VYSA games, other community events, work schedules).

Contact coordinators for the Venus Special Events Committee and the VYSA coordinator and ask for future dates or a calendar with all fixed dates listed.

Promote the events by having the Superintendent Matthews send out a mass AlertNow message that is sent to all families with students currently enrolled in VISD via voicemail as well as by sticking up flyers in the town square, on the windows of local businesses, throughout the high school, and by word of mouth.

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Assign a member to contact Superintendent Matthews with the

message and when to have it sent out via an AlertNow message, sent to all families with phones, or left a voicemail.

Members would create promotional posters for the plarn parties on Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher. As incentives for creativity, the best design would serve as the face of the It’s a Plarn Party Project and receive small prizes.

More ways to contribute. In addition to the Mats for Uganda, the Venus Chapter will also

take part in Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, an event during one day, October 31st, where proceeds

will benefit of the ELIMINATE Project, taking them a step closer to their $110 million goal.

For the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF component of our It’s a Plarn Party Service Project,

the local Key Club sponsor will order Trick-or-Treat boxes made specifically for this event from

the UNICEF website.

The sponsor will then distribute the boxes after FBLA and Key Club meetings and each member who grabs a box must sign their names to a list so that each club may keep track of who will be collecting, and how many boxes will be returned.

After receiving their boxes, members will decorate the boxes as encouraged by UNICEF.

Members will provide their own transportation to their trick-or-treating neighborhoods and instead of asking for candies and goods, members will request monetary donations—coins or dollars—to donate to the ELIMINATE Project.

Members must return donation boxes to club sponsors and all proceeds will be counted once all boxes are returned.

Proceeds will then be sent to UNICEF once a total has been confirmed.

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Steps to Implementation

As a first order of business, the plans of any project conducted under a school

organization must receive approval from the school administration to ensure that no

discrepancies exist between the proposed project details and certain restrictions placed upon

school organizations which are defined by school policy. On May 11, 2012 approval was

received and our chapter could then commence action.

Step 1: During a chapter meeting, members who designed posters to promote the plarn parties

presented them. Following the meeting, members hung up posters all around town, starting with

the high school. Members drove up to local businesses and personally asked the owners if they

would support the ELIMINATE Project by allowing our promotional posters to be hung on the

windows of their establishment.

Step 2: For our collection bins, members brought up their old, unused recycling bins to the

school and properly labeled them for plastic bags. They were then distributed at the high foot

traffic places—at the town square, local grocery store, and gas stations once the business

owners personally expressed their approval, plus a few placed within the school cafeteria.

Contents of each bin are collected at the end of every week by members who live in the area

and brought up to the school at their convenience. This gives members of the community a way

to recycle their plastic bags that they would otherwise toss into the trash bin.

Step 3: After contacting local organizations to check on possible dates of conflict, a final date

was set for the first community-wide plarn party on Sunday, June 3, 2012 from 10am to 3pm.

Step 4: With a date set for the event, officers contacted Superintendent Matthews by email and

by phone for him to send out a mass invite to the Venus community via AlertNow messaging,

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which sends a voicemail to all documented numbers of students currently enrolled in VISD. The

message was sent out on May 19th.

Step 5: On June 3rd, about fifty people showed up to the plarn party hosted in the high school

cafeteria. By then, thousands of plastic bags were collected, and attendees were encouraged to

bring additional bags. Teams of members split up to teach groups of five or less about the

process of making plarn and rolling them into a ball so that the strings of plarn don’t tangle up.

Crocheters met with the select few eager to learn the craft and got them started on unfinished

mats while they started new ones.

Step 6: After the plarn party, two more mats had been started. Members of the community who

could crochet at home took these mats along with them, as well as many completed balls of

plarn to continue on with.

Step 7: By the first day of school, three mats had been completed and delivered to the local

ministries to contact missionaries who would soon be on their way to Uganda. This bypasses

the costs of directly shipping the mats to Uganda.

Step 8: As an annual tradition, members of the local Key Club and FBLA participate in Trick-or-

Treat for UNICEF, where students go around their local trick-or-treating neighborhoods and ask

for monetary donations instead of candy. All proceeds are sent to UNICEF to benefit the women

and children suffering in poorer parts of the world. The Key Club sponsor ordered the official

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF boxes from the UNICEF website on October 1, 2012 and the parcel

arrived a few days later.

Step 9: A scheduled meeting was had between the two clubs on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 to

decorate boxes, as UNICEF encourages the participants to do. Members who were willing to

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participate had to sign a list to ensure honesty. Everyone who signed up for boxes were

required to return the same amount of boxes they were issued.

Step 10: After the event, members were given up to one week to return their Trick-or-Treat

donation boxes to their club sponsors. Counting the amounts of donation money prior to delivery

was encouraged to make certain the correct amount was delivered.

Step 11: Once all the donation boxes were returned and accounted for, the club sponsors

counted up their totals and combined them. The funds were then transferred to the Key Club

account, and a check was written to be delivered to UNICEF. On November 14, 2012, we were

notified that the Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF money had been received by their organization’s

office. Promotional materials and total fundraising reports can be found in Appendix B.

Step 12: Halfway into the first semester of the school year, the Venus chapter made provisions

for another community plarn party to take place on Friday, November 30, 2012, after school,

from 3:30pm to 5:30pm. To maximize participation, members posted promotional flyers all

around the high school, as well as morning announcements broadcasted to the whole school.

Step 13: On November 30, 2012, another fifty community members showed up to the social

gathering, over half of them new, and the chapter split up to teach the newcomers about the

plarn-making process. Crocheters continued on unfinished mats.

Step 14: As this is an ongoing project—the Venus Chapter continues to raise funds for

ELIMINATE Project and to help make Mats for Uganda—our chapter has plans to set up an

upcoming date in early April to host another community-wide plarn party.

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How to Make Plarn

What is plarn? Plarn, broken down its root words, is a portmanteau word composed of

“plastic” and “yarn.” Plarn starts out as plastic bags—the same ones used in markets or

department stores. The bags are then cut up into little “rings” and the rings are tied together like

string. About 200-300 bags will make a 4x6 foot mat.

You will need:

Plastic bags

Scissors

Flat surface to work on

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Once you have gathered all of the necessary materials, here’s how we do it:

Fold the bag in half, hotdog style.

Fold the bag in half again, hotdog style.

Cut off the bottoms of the bags.

Cut off the tops of the bags (the handles).

This is how the flattened and twice folded bag should look once the top and bottoms have been cut.

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Pull one ring into the interior of the other, twice, and pull it until it knots.

This is how two plastic rings look together when tied at the knot.

The strips look like plastic rings when unraveled.

To create a string, you take two rings and tie them together by placing one atop the other.

After trimming the bottom and tops, cut the rest into one-inch strips.

The bag will look like this once fully cut into strips.

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Impact and Benefits

As a local organization, the Chapter has demonstrated what it means to be good

Samaritans, devoting time to teach others how something as simple as recycling plastic bags

can help save lives in remote parts of the world they have never even heard of. There are

trillions of plastic bags used by consumers every year and a mere 1% make it to recycling

plants. Americans alone throw away a billion plastic bags, enough to create 300,000 tons of

landfill waste. Appendix C has more information about how plastic bags are deteriorating life.

Plastic bags, unless specially made, are not biodegradable, meaning they will not break

down through natural biological decomposition, such as bacterial or enzymatic action. Even

when they photo-degrade by sunlight in landfills (which can take up to 1,000 years), plastic bags

do not lose their toxic properties—they are simply broken down into smaller, sedimentary

pieces—and still carry the same plastic toxicity once they reach other ecosystems, mainly in the

water, where marine populations are harmed. Over a hundred thousand birds and marine

animals die per year after getting caught in plastic product traps or mistakenly consuming them.

As obvious as it seems, plastic products are not safe to eat.

By holding collection drives and providing convenient places around town for community

members to dispose of their unwanted plastic bags, the Chapter has kept thousands of plastic

bags from unnecessarily littering landfills and upcycling them into plastic mats for young

mothers to give birth on.

Hospitals throughout Africa use mats made from plastic due to their hygienic

properties—plastic mats can be sanitized quickly, can easily be stored or laid out, or carried in

transported, and keeps its users from dangerous spores found in soil. Best of all, they are 100%

recycled material, from the very same bags that millions of Americans are throwing in the trash.

In the more rural parts of Asia and Africa, decent health care facilities are scarce, and

medical tools are often used inadequately or are not sterilized after use. A lot of mothers do not

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know proper, safe precautions to take when giving birth and ultimately, both the mothers and

their newborn babies suffer.

When pregnant women cannot make it to hospitals, they end up giving birth outside on

the ground in poor conditions, where tetanus spores can infect the newborn’s umbilical stump

and also reach the mother. These spores are Clostridium Tetani, bacteria found ubiquitously in

the soil, everywhere. Once newborns have contracted the disease, the mother does not have

long before the effects start to kick in and she has to get the child medical care as soon as

possible.

Babies who have contracted tetanus undergo a series of painful muscle spasms, body

convulsions, and sensitivity to sunlight or touch. Ultimately, the mother will not even be able to

hold her child without harming it. By giving mothers the tetanus-toxoid (TT) vaccine, they

transfer tetanus antibodies to their unborn child(ren), and will not contract disease even upon

contact as the child now carries immunity.

Allowing mothers to experience the joys of holding their newborn babies in their arms

without causing them harm is a priceless impact that no preventable disease should take away.

Our Chapter is proud to be part of a world movement to eliminate maternal and neonatal

tetanus and continue to support until the rest of the mothers and babies in the 31 countries still

battling against MNT have won. Appendix D lists out those 31 countries along with those that

have already eliminated MNT.

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Evidence of Publicity

Plarn Party – June 3, 2012

“Bags, bags, BAGS!!!”

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Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF – October 31, 2012

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Plarn Party – November 30, 2012

Members having a

blast playing in

1000+ plastic bags

“Did someone

say pizza?!”

Get the party started in here!!!

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Bibliography

Carroll, Elizabeth. “Tell me more.” Mats for Uganda Wordpress, 2012. 28 Dec. 2012.

“Elimination of Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus.” UNICEF, 18 Jan. 2013. Web. 18 Jan. 2013.

Kiem, Elizabeth. “Historic commitment to save lives of mothers and newborns worldwide.”

UNICEF, 25 June 2010. Web. 12 Jan. 2013.

Roach, John. "Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?" National Geographic.

National Geographic Society, 2 Sept. 2003. Web. 12 Jan. 2013.

“The Eliminate Project - Kiwanis Eliminating Maternal/Neonatal Tetanus.” ELIMINATE Project.

Kiwanis International, 2013. Web. 12 Jan. 2013.

UNICEF and WHO. “21 Countries eliminated MNT between 2000 & 2011.” October 2011. PDF

file.

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Appendices

Appendix A – Global MNT Stats

ELIMINATE Project Progress. Through the joint efforts of partners much progress has been

made between 1999 and January 2013:

More than 118 million women have been immunized with two or more doses of TT vaccine

29 countries (Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Egypt, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Senegal, South Africa, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), and 15 States of India, all of Ethiopia except Somaliland, and almost 29 of 33 provinces in Indonesia have been validated to have eliminated MNT.

As of 2010, approximately 90% reduction of Neonatal Tetanus mortality has been achieved in the last 20 years.

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Summary of fundraising totals. As of December 16, 2012, The Eliminate Project, Kiwanis’s

global campaign for children, in partnership with UNICEF, has raisedUS$22,553,573.38

million in cash and pledges (US$97.23 per member average) and has a total of 286 Model

Clubs, 27 100K Clubs, 10 Lead Gifts, 44 Major Gifts and 2,758 Walter Zeller Fellows.

Here are totals for a few of the districts (there are many more that have been left off for space-

saving reasons:

District Total funds

raised

Total

Model

Clubs

Total

100K

Clubs

Total

Lead

Gifts

Total

Major

Gifts

*Per member

average

New Jersey US$356,344.35 2 1 0 3 US$158.30

Carolinas US$1,115,391.92 19 3 0 0 US$150.46

Louisiana-

Mississippi-

West

Tennessee

US$624,122.04 12 1 0 2 US$126.91

**Texas-

Oklahoma

US$850,548.38 17 0 1 0 US$85.29

Switzerland-

Liechtenstein

US$604,465.43 1 0 0 0 US$83.43

Michigan US$447,136.37 3 2 0 1 US$81.19

** Venus High School is part of the Texas-Oklahoma District, which has raised an overall

total of US$850,548.38 for ELIMINATE Project since 2010.

*Per member average = total funds raised/total membership as of January 2011.

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Appendix B – UNICEF Trick or Treat Report

VHS Clubs raised over $480.51 during Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF!

Kiwanis-family Service Leadership Program (SLP): Fundraising totals

As of 1/21/13 Total funds raised

Key Club International 1,085,113.04

Builders Club 82,269.40

Circle K International 76,090.15

K-Kids 67,174.31

Aktion Club 26,634.33

Total 1,337,957.60

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF 2011 total (Included in Total)

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF 2012 total (Included in Total)

US$611,626.07

US$334,689.15

480.51 200

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Appendix C – Article from National Geographic News

Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?

John Roach for National Geographic News September 2, 2003

The "paper or plastic" conundrum that vexed earnest shoppers throughout the 1980s and 90s is

largely moot today. Most grocery store baggers don't bother to ask anymore. They drop the

bananas in one plastic bag as they reach for another to hold the six-pack of soda. The pasta

sauce and noodles will get one too, as will the dish soap.

Plastic bags are so cheap to produce, sturdy, plentiful, easy to carry and store that they have

captured at least 80 percent of the grocery and convenience store market since they were

introduced a quarter century ago, according to the Arlington, Virginia-based American Plastics

Council.

As a result, the totes are everywhere. They sit balled up and stuffed into the one that hangs

from the pantry door. They line bathroom trash bins. They carry clothes to the gym. They clutter

landfills. They flap from trees. They float in the breeze. They clog roadside drains. They drift on

the high seas. They fill sea turtle bellies.

"The numbers are absolutely staggering," said Vincent Cobb, an entrepreneur in Chicago,

Illinois, who recently launched the Web site Reusablebags.com to educate the public about

what he terms the "true costs" associated with the spread of "free" bags. He sells reusable bags

as a viable solution.

According to Cobb's calculations extrapolated from data released by the United States

Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 on U.S. plastic bag, sack, and wrap consumption,

somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.

Of those, millions end up in the litter stream outside of landfills—estimates range from less than

one to three percent of the bags.

Laurie Kusek, a spokeswoman for the American Plastics Council, said the industry works with

its U.S. retail customers to encourage recycling of plastic bags, which are in high demand from

companies such as Trex in Winchester, Virginia, for use in building materials.

http://reusablebags.com/

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"We also feel it is important to understand that plastic grocery bags are some of the most

reused items around the house," she said. "Many, many bags are reused as book and lunch

bags as kids head off to school, as trash can liners, and to pick up Fido's droppings off the

lawn."

But like candy wrappers, chewing gum, cigarette butts, and thousands of other pieces of junk,

millions of the plastic bags end up as litter. Once in the environment, it takes months to

hundreds of years for plastic bags to breakdown. As they decompose, tiny toxic bits seep into

soils, lakes, rivers, and the oceans, said Cobb.

Plastic Fantastic

The Film and Bag Federation, a trade group within the Society of the Plastics Industry based in

Washington, D.C., said the right choice between paper or plastic bags is clearly plastic.

Compared to paper grocery bags, plastic grocery bags consume 40 percent less energy,

generate 80 percent less solid waste, produce 70 percent fewer atmospheric emissions, and

release up to 94 percent fewer waterborne wastes, according to the federation.

Robert Bateman, president of Roplast Industries, a manufacturer of plastic bags—including

reusable ones—in Oroville, California, said the economic advantage of plastic bags over paper

bags has become too significant for store owners to ignore. It costs one cent for a standard

plastic grocery sack, whereas a paper bag costs four cents, he said.

"The plastic bags are so inexpensive that in the stores no one treats them as worth anything …

they use two, three, or four when one would do just as well," he said.

First introduced in the 1970s, plastic bags now account for four out of every five bags handed

out at the grocery store. "When you look at it as a product, it is an unbelievable success story,"

said Cobb.

The success of the plastic bag has meant a dramatic increase in the amount of sacks found

floating in the oceans where they choke, strangle, and starve wildlife and raft alien species

around the world, according to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey

in Cambridge, England, who studies the impact of marine debris.

Barnes said that plastic bags have gone "from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being

almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78° North [latitude] to Falklands 51° South [latitude], but I'll

bet they'll be washing up in Antarctica within the decade."

Bateman said that plastic bags are becoming a victim of their success. "The industry is at the

stage where its success has caused concerns and these concerns need to be addressed

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responsibly," he said. Among other initiatives, Bateman supports the development of

biodegradable plastic bags, a technology that has made strides in recent years.

Plastax to the Rescue?

Plastic bag litter has become such an environmental nuisance and eyesore that Ireland, Taiwan,

South Africa, Australia, and Bangladesh have heavily taxed the totes or banned their use

outright. Several other regions, including England and some U.S. cities, are considering similar

actions.

Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment in County Cork, said the 15 cent (about

20 cents U.S.) tax on plastic bags introduced there in March 2002 has resulted in a 95 percent

reduction in their use. "It's been an extraordinary success," he said.

According to Lowes, just about everyone in Ireland carries around a reusable bag and the

plastic bags that once blighted the verdant Irish countryside are now merely an occasional

eyesore. Cobb believes a similar tax in the U.S. would have a similar effect on reducing

consumption.

The American Plastics Council is wary of such a tax in the U.S. They say it would cost tens of

thousands of jobs and result in an increase in energy consumption, pollution, landfill space, and

grocery prices as store owners increase reliance on more expensive paper bags as an

alternative.

Bateman said the Irish tax of about U.S. 20 cents per bag is too high, but that a tax of 3 to 5

cents could have a positive impact on reducing plastic bag consumption by changing people's

behavior.

"Having bags charged has some merits because it gets them used more responsibly," he said.

For example, instead of a bagger using six bags to package a person's dinner, the bagger might

use just two.

As for Cobb, he hopes people will begin to realize that paper and plastic bags both come at

great cost to the environment and instead of scratching their head when asked which type they

prefer, they'll pull a tightly packed reusable bag from their pocket.

"We want to make it cool to carry reusable shopping bags," he said.

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Appendix D – Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination Initiative

The World Health Assembly first called for elimination of neonatal tetanus in 1989. In 1999, the goal was expanded to include elimination of the maternal tetanus. At that time, there were 57 countries that had still not eliminated MNT. The figure today stands at 59 with inclusion of Timor Leste in 2002 and South Sudan in 2011. As of November 1, 2012, 28 of these countries had achieved MNT elimination leaving 31 countries (noted below) that have not yet eliminated the disease. Afghanistan Angola Cambodia Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Côte d'Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Gabon Guinea Haiti India Indonesia Iraq

Kenya Lao People's Democratic Republic Madagascar Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Sierra Leone Somalia South Sudan Sudan Yemen

Countries that recently eliminated MNT Mozambique Fall 2010 Uganda February 2011 Ghana November 2011 Liberia December 2011 Senegal December 2011 Burkina Faso March 2012 Guinea-Bissau March 2012 Tanzania May 2012 Timor Leste May 2012 China October 2012 Last update November 30, 2012

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Appendix E – Acknowledgements

The Venus FBLA Chapter would like to acknowledge the wonderful individuals who have

helped make “It’s a Plarn Party” such a phenomenal success for our community.

We would like to thank:

Beth and Haley Humphus, from No Turning Back Ministry for helping coordinate plarn

parties at the school;

Melissa Greene, our local Key Club Sponsor for being on top of things;

Elizabeth Hodges, our local FBLA Advisor for her greener living expertise;

National Geographic News, for helping us teaching our chapter more about the dangers

of not recycling and solutions for a greener community;

Kiwanis International and UNICEF, for bringing these worldly problems to light and

allowing us the resources to help;

And lastly,

Our Venus Community, for your hard work and dedication for a better future.

Without you, our project could have never even left the drawing boards, nor would it

have been possible to reach the large scale that it has. We thank each and every one of our

community members who have donated their plastic bags, attended our plarn parties, and have

made a difference in the lives of thousands of mothers, babies, as well as all who inhabit the

Earth, everywhere.

2013 csp - "it's a plarn party" mats for uganda

Documents

plarn party

birthing mats

appendix c

appendix b

appendix d

appendix e

plarn plastic yarn

sterile birthing conditions