Bush Lauds American Children for Their Generosity

With bake sales, lemonade stands and broken piggy banks, American children have raised more than $1.5 million to help provide warmth and comfort to the children of Afghanistan, President Bush said Saturday as he surveyed boxes of coats, candy, socks and crayons that will be dispatched overseas today.

“We have given the Afghan children something to smile about, because America’s children are generous and kind and compassionate,” Bush told about 100 workers and children at a New Windsor, Md., warehouse, where a relief agency has been storing materials for the children’s campaign.

Bush called the effort “a reminder that we are at war with the Taliban regime, not with the good, innocent people of Afghanistan.”

On Oct. 11, the president asked schoolchildren to send $1 each to the White House for a new America’s Fund for Afghan Children. Since then, he said Saturday, children have undertaken “all kinds of drives to raise money.”

“It’s happening all across the country, and I want to thank everybody for their hard work, for raising the donations,” Bush said.

It is impossible to know how many children responded to the president’s call or the full amount raised. About $1.5 million was received in the first week of the drive, said Leslie VanSant, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, which is managing the fund. The money came in about 250,000 letters, some of them from classrooms representing many children.

But soon after the fund was created, mail delivery to the White House was halted because of letter-borne anthrax attacks. Letters to the fund have been piling up at a site away from the White House, and VanSant said no one knows yet how much money they contain.

There are 38 million U.S. children in kindergarten through the eighth grade.

Bush’s thank you to schoolchildren came as officials in Uzbekistan announced the reopening Saturday of a bridge to northern Afghanistan that is considered an important route for humanitarian supplies. The Uzbek president announced the reopening after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

About $1.1 million from the children’s fund has been used to buy 1,500 tents, 1,658 winter jackets and 10,000 gift parcels containing hats, socks, soap, toothbrushes, candy, toys and school supplies.

The material will be flown Sunday to Germany and then to Turkmenistan, where it will be placed on trucks and driven into the northern Afghan provinces of Faryab and Balkh.

Bush said each parcel is marked: “A gift to Afghan children from American children,” written in several local languages.

In all, about $2.4 million has been spent on behalf of the children’s fund, VanSant said. The Red Cross bought supplies in Afghanistan, including blankets and medical kits, with the expectation that mail bearing money from American children, once out of quarantine, would reimburse the agency, VanSant said.

“We just didn’t want the care and concern of America’s children to become a casualty to what was happening with the mail,” VanSant said.

Reynold Levy, president of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee relief and resettlement agency, called the campaign “a wonderful gesture” that had sparked much-needed discussion among children, parents and teachers about displaced people.

“Having said that, there are 21 million Afghans, and hundreds of thousands of them are displaced in the cold, and are without food and clean water and clothing and provisions to keep them alive,” Levy added.

“So, this effort would have to be multiplied thousands of times over,” he said. “While we are delighted by the involvement of children, it isn’t a substitute for the massive support that is and will be needed.”

At Mercy Corps, a relief agency based in Portland, Ore., Neal Keny-Guyer praised Bush for creating the children’s fund.

“The more that our kids understand and feel compassion with kids around the world, that’s a good thing,” he said. He said his group and other relief agencies had received new donations because Bush had inspired people to raise money for refugees.

The U.S. government has spent more than $246 million on humanitarian aid to Afghanistan since Oct. 1, the State Department said.

Bush said Americans have “been made painfully aware of the plight of the Afghan children. One in three Afghan children is an orphan. Almost half of Afghan children suffer from malnutrition. One in four Afghan children won’t live beyond their fifth birthday.”

Donations to the children’s fund may be sent to: America’s Fund for Afghan Children, c/o The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20509-1600.