Manhasset Students for Peace Through Understanding

By Marc Haskins

In a house in a small village with a median household income twice that of New York State on a recent Saturday afternoon, students, cross-legged and kneeling, packaged books for one of the region’s neediest charities.

The group of 10 students—members of Manhasset Students for Peace Through Understanding—gathered over 1,000 books during a month-long book drive. They will be donated to the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, a charity included in the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund.

“Depending on whether they give each kid one or two books, about a thousand kids will have something for Christmas,” said Elena Schietinger, an adviser to the student group and mother of 14-year-old Cole Schietinger, who organized the coalition.

Cole Schietinger started Manhasset Students for Peace Through Understanding after a trip to Washington D.C. in the seventh-grade led him to People to People International. Manhasset Students is a student chapter of the non-profit group started by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.

People to People International’s mission, as read on its Web site, is to “enhance international understanding and friendship through educational, cultural and humanitarian activities…”

“I called up friends, I put ads in the paper, and that’s pretty much how the group started, by participation from others,” said Cole Schietinger, a freshman at Regis High School in Manhattan. He added that the group has developed along with the mother organization because of healthy “verbal and financial encouragement.”

Elena Schietinger said her goal as an adviser was to do a project at Christmas that would teach the children “in our privileged community that there is something greater than them.”

She said that she would have liked to see more participants, but that the group has been purposely kept small and the students handpicked based on their desire to be involved. Schietinger said as the students see the success more and more will take on responsibility. “This is part of a learning experience for them too, so they’re learning to become more and more independent,” she said.

Kim Harmeyer is the mother of one of the Manhasset Students members who aided the group during the book drive and hosted the book packaging at her house. “I think it went really well, the response was incredible,” she said. “I didn’t realize we’d get so many books and I think they did a really good job.”