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2008-2009 First Place Winner – Diana Jeang (Montgomery Blair High School) Diana Jeang is a senior in the Communication Arts Program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. Diana speaks fluent French and is the president of the French Honors Society at Blair. She has performed in various musical theater productions both inside and outside of school and is a member of her high school swim team as well as RMSC. Outside of school, Diana also studies voice and piano. Diana has spent the past two summers interning in biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health. She was awarded first place in the 2008-2009 Children of Abraham Peace Essay Contest, and a leadership grant from FFC to start an environmental initiative at Blair titled Green Trading (www.greentradingnow.com). She is extremely grateful to the Fund for the Future of our Children for the support and encouragement that they have given her. Essay Abstract ("Keepers of God's Earth"): On the New York Stock exchange the price of gold soars over $800 per ounce. In the Peruvian Andes, thirty thousand people, clustered on a mountain top, unearth two hundred and fifty tons of rock and ore daily to harvest a single ounce of gold (Larmer). Thousands of miles away, in Lincoln County, West Virginia, three generations of sons have worked at the Hobet 21 strip mine. Twelve thousand acres of mountain rich in coal lay barren, scarred by open pit mining. Over 1,000 miles of West Virginian streams have become polluted by coal waste; and 300,000 acres of hardwood forest have vanished from mountaintops (Mitchell). Back in South America, a Mayorunan tribe is forced to migrate east of their homes on the Javari River to make way for the clearing of the rainforest. Over the past 40 years, 20 percent of their forest has been cut down for development (Wallace). The jungle has been sacrificed for the gains of the oil, gas and logging conglomerates. In today’s society which places importance on economic gains and getting ahead, most would readily dismiss the consequences of these environmental assaults as necessary costs of the advance of human civilization. Nevertheless, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the three Abrahamic religions, heed us to keep our trust with God and honor His instructions for our responsible stewardship of Earth. On the value of the 2008-2009 Children of Abraham project: “I write to thank you again. I appreciate everything that FFC does for students. It was very inspirational to hear all the presentations and project ideas at the ceremony today. It is so wonderful that you are making these projects possible for students. I'm really excited about my carbon-footprint proposal, and I plan to begin working on it diligently. I look forward to being in touch with you for your advice and your input.”
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