From a little Elgin jar to a Penny Harvest Field, the children from New York City schools participated in this extraordinary harvest to collect pennies from family, friends and neighbors. All these pennies don’t actually go to their piggy banks but they are gathered together and are trucked to the Penny Harvest Field. The Penny Harvest Field is at the Rockefeller Center between 50th and 51st Streets. This year, it was opened from December 10 to December 31, 2007. The Field is sponsored by a non-profit program, the Common Cents, who believe that the youngest citizens can spark extraordinary social change if they simply get the support they deserve. Over 850 schools participated this year to this harvest and their goal was to reach $1 million dollars which works out to 100 million pennies! How to get 100 millions pennies out of the field? Well, once the field is closed they used two specialized vacuum trucks to collect the pennies from the field. The rate to remove the pennies is around $1,000 per minute and it will be emptied into twenty-five 20-foot cargo boxes. It’s just amazing how you can get so much money with only pennies! This shows that if we all work together we can move mountains and make a big difference.

Source: emonome.com