Pennies from Heaven

By Jim Kielsmeier, NYLC President and CEO

On December 10, 2007, I saw the amazed look on David Rockefeller’s face as he viewed New York City's Rockefeller Center. The 92-year-old banker and philanthropist was certainly familiar with the enormous Christmas tree, the skating rink, and the shops that filled the complex his family built, but this year the space had been transformed.

New York City school children, through the nonprofit Common Cents, had created the Penney Harvest Field — a glistening 165- by 35-foot field of 100 million pennies. It was a breathtaking, one-of-a-kind monument to their hard work. I watched people approach the field and express the very sense of wonder I felt. And yes, that was one million lightly guarded dollars in the middle of New York City. Not only were people not stealing any of it, they were adding to it — emptying their pockets of loose change.

Though the display in Rockefeller Center was the first of its kind, this gathering of pennies is an annual event. Every fall, children between the ages of four and 14 connect with their parents, friends, and neighbors as they go door to door in search of pennies — money they will use to help solve local and global problems. And this goes further than simply collecting the money; the students involved actually decide how the money will be used through a philanthropic granting process.

December 10 was the opening event, which included children from some of the 830 schools who collected the 193 tons of pennies. The children were visibly proud of the spectacle they had created, like artists who had waited a long time for their paintings to be unveiled.

Of course, the greatest beauty of the Penny Harvest isn't the field or even the effort the students put into collecting the pennies; it's young people identifying real needs and taking action to address them.

My thanks to Common Cents co-founder Teddy Gross. Sixteen years ago, he listened to his four-year-old daughter, Nora, when she asked what they could do to help the homeless people they passed on the street. Because he listened and took action, children in New York and around the country have a way to be compassionate citizens. In 2008, philanthropy groups at each of the participating schools will give away every penny collected to worthy causes through more than 1,500 individual grants — many to aid the homeless people Nora and others want to help.