Marshall Legacy Institute

The Marshall Legacy Institute's (MLI) emphasis is on local capacity-building, and helping countries help themselves. MLI's longest running and most well-known program is the Mine Detection Dog Partnership Program (MDDPP), which works to increase the quality and quantity of life-saving Mine Detection Dogs (MDDs) in countries severely affected by landmines. MLI is the only organization in the world that donates highly trained MDDs to the neediest of countries, while also training & equipping local dog handlers to safely and effectively employ the MDDs in national landmine clearance programs. By expediting the rate at which land is cleared, the MDD teams not only save lives, but also positively impact the socio-economic growth of fragile post-conflict countries and the likelihood that these countries will remain at peace. MLI has a long and successful track record of implementing our programs in 13 mine-contaminated countries since our founding in 1997. We have received 33 grants totaling over $7.4 million from the U.S. State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (PM/WRA), and have raised nearly $5 million in private funding to support humanitarian demining projects worldwide. MLI’s largest program, the MDDPP, has provided 172 Mine Detection Dogs (MDDs) to 11 countries and plans to provide up to 22 additional dogs to Afghanistan, Angola and Sri Lanka in 2012.In each country where MLI has developed an MDD capacity, the beneficiary countries have gone onto expand their MDD programs, recognizing the great value that they provide. MLI adheres to international standards for training and certifying each of its dog-handler teams to ensure that the MDDs can safely and effectively locate landmines.MLI’s MDDs teams search 30 times the amount of land that manual deminers can search in a given period time, without sacrificing safety or accuracy.None of MLI’s MDDs have ever been injured or killed in a landmine clearance operation.In 2011, MLI’s MDDs cleared 9 million square meters of land in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.

With more than 100 million landmines contaminating 76 countries, and tens of thousands of people and animals being killed or maimed each year, no single solution exists for the global landmine epidemic. However, employing Mine Detection Dog (MDD) teams is one of the most efficient and effective tools for detecting landmines in the world today.  Dogs have the amazing ability to smell explosive odors, and a dog trained to be an MDD can not only detect the explosive gas emanating from landmines, but can mark the location for its handler, while still maintaining procedures that keep both the dog and the handler safe.  Traditional demining techniques rely on probes and metal detectors, but these tend to be much less efficient than dogs, which can quickly search an area many times larger than that searched by a manual deminer.  With a working life of six to eight years, MDDs are one of the most versatile, valuable tools to use when conducting landmine clearance operations. Each dog will save or impact approximately 10,000 lives in its lifetime.

Currently, MLI has 88 dogs working in countries throughout the world and, in just the past few months, these dedicated dogs and their handlers have cleared thousands of acres of land that had been filled with landmines that might otherwise have caused hundreds of men, women and children to lose their limbs or even their lives.

The Marshall Legacy Institute tracks the success of its programs through regular reporting, which identifies how much land is cleared during delineated periods of time by the K9 Demining Corps dogs.

Currently, MLI has 88 Mine Detection Dogs (MDDs) working throughout the world to rid it of the scourge of landmines. In Azerbaijan, 22 MDDs cleared 813 acres of land that can now be restored as farmland.  In Afghanistan, during a 3 month period, 18 MDDs cleared more than 100 acres of land that can restored as pasture and agricultural land.

<p >Recognizing that a peaceful and secure future for the world relies upon promoting global citizenship and teaching young people about world cultures, diversity, team building, and the consequences of conflict, MLI&#8217;s CHildren Against Mines Program (CHAMPS) fosters a holistic education that includes service learning projects that enable schoolchildren in countries like Afghanistan and Vietnam to interact regularly with American students through frequent, supervised video conferences, and to work together to help landmine survivors.&nbsp; MLI&#8217;s ultimate goal is to expand CHAMPS so that there are schools throughout the world that are linked together, enabling children to learn about each other and foster a sense of interconnectedness. &nbsp;</p> <p >MLI&#8217;s CHAMPS staff members travel throughout the U.S. and to many mine-affected countries, speaking to schoolchildren and raising awareness about landmines.&nbsp; Utilizing the keen skills of our &#8220;canine ambassador,&#8221; a Belgian Malinois named <strong><em>Utsi </em></strong>(who &#8220;sniffed out&#8221; landmines in Eritrea for six years), to present simulated minefield demonstrations, CHAMPS inspires American children to not only explore the global landmine problem, but to also become part of the solution.&nbsp; CHAMPS elevates awareness about landmines, promotes global citizenship, and raises funds to provide critically needed medical care and prostheses to youth who have been wounded by landmines.</p><p ></p> <p >CHAMPS links schools in the United States to &#8216;sister&#8217; schools in countries ravaged by the effects of landmines. By using internet video messengers, such as Skype, the schoolchildren are able to discover more about each other, and the resulting empathy promotes a greater sense of cultural understanding. As part of the curriculum, schools in the mine afflicted countries &#8216;adopt&#8217; young landmine survivors in their community and identify their needs, while the schools in the United States are then tasked with raising funds to provide assistance to the young survivor(s), including purchasing prosthetic limbs and providing the funding for rehabilitative care and vocational training, such as computer skills. MLI implements CHAMPS by identifying schools and CHAMPS managers to lead the programs, both in the United States and the mine affected countries, setting up the internet video chats, keeping the schools connected through scheduled &#8220;chats,&#8221; and facilitating the use of funds to assist the young survivor(s).&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><div>&nbsp;</div><div>This program began in 2003 and, since its inception, 27 U.S.-based schools have each raised $20,000 to sponsor their own dog, and dozens of schools have each raised $5,000 to provide prosthetic limbs and other rehabilitative care to young landmine survivors.</div>

<p>While continuing to work to diminish the number of landmines throughout the world, MLI recognizes that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have already been injured by landmines, and approximately 5,000 additional men, women, and children become survivors each year.&nbsp; Therefore, the Survivors&#8217; Assistance program began as a way to implement a variety of programs that assist those who have been injured by landmines. Landmine survivors face seemingly insurmountable challenges in addition to the obvious physical disabilities, such as psychological stress and economic hardships. MLI&#8217;s Survivors&#8217; Assistance program helps combat these challenges by providing prosthetic devices, rehabilitative treatments, and vocational training to landmine survivors. MLI is also currently funding a program that provides specialized rehabilitative medical training to doctors in Iraq, as well as a program that is building a computer lab and providing vocational training to landmine survivors in Yemen so they may learn employable skills and have the ability to provide financially for their families.&nbsp; MLI also partnered with the Fantomi Sitting Volleyball team, comprised largely of landmine survivors, to promote mine risk education to Bosnian youth during engaging exhibition volleyball games.&nbsp; Since the program got underway at the end of 2011, the team has already delivered dozens of presentations, reaching nearly 400 schoolchildren living in close proximity to minefields.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In 2012/2013, MLI plans to expand its Survivors&#8217; Assistance program by initiating a new program in Iraq that would restore hope &amp; dignity among landmine survivors by ensuring access to medical facilities, establishing a prosthetic clinic for children within the Basra Rehabilitation Center and by providing training to enhance job skills &amp; employment opportunities for survivors. Young survivors will learn that they can be active contributors to society, and their training may enable them to re-enter Iraq&#8217;s educational system. MLI will team with the Iraqi Mine Clearance Organization (IMCO) to implement this initiative which has been approved by the Iraqi Ministries of Education and Health.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>This project has five major objectives: (1) Build, equip, and man a vocational training and outreach facility (VOTOF) for mine survivors on land that has been donated by a survivor; (2) Determine prosthetic needs among survivors, especially children, and train prosthetic technicians &amp; provide required materials &amp; equipment currently lacking to address effectively the prosthetic needs of the large Basra survivor population; (3) Coordinate medical rehabilitation and provide transportation for survivors; (4) Link American students with school-aged Iraqi survivors who receive rehabilitative training at the VOTOF to assist other young survivors in the Basra area; (5) Gain &amp; maintain private donor support for this cost-sharing project. &nbsp;Funding for this program would be partially funded by the U.S. Government; MLI has requested matching funds from the Government of the Netherlands and has preliminary plans to expand this project model to Afghanistan and Lebanon if funding from the Netherlands is approved.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>