Sunday, July 10, 2011

Charity attempting to break penny record

9 July 2011 Last updated at 13:28 GMT Pennies for Life founder Peter Ryan with schoolchildren The charity is seeking 1,000 volunteers over the weekend to help assemble the 50 mile line A west London charity is attempting to break the world record for the longest line of coins ever laid.

Chiswick-based Pennies for Life has collected four million pennies, which will later be used to fund small loans for African women to start businesses.

The current record for a line of 3,406,234 coins (40.32 miles) was set in Fort Scott in Kansas, USA, in 2008.

The attempt to break the 50 mile barrier will be made at Chiswick Community School.

The charity is seeking 1,000 volunteers over the weekend to help assemble the 50 mile line of pennies, which is the equivalent of the distance from Chiswick to Oxford.

Volunteers are assembling the line on a table by placing the pennies on strips of sticky tape before laying them on the ground.

An official adjudicator from the Guinness Book of Records will observe the attempt.

Starting small

All the pennies raised will be donated to the charity's MicroLoan Foundation in order to help women in poor rural communities in Malawi to start their own businesses.

Since its establishment in 2002, the charity's funds have helped to finance businesses selling tomatoes, washing powder, knitwear and farming pigs.

The charity also funds mentoring and training for women and essential infrastructure including solar panels that generate electricity for communities.

Pennies for Life's founder and chief executive, Peter Ryan, said the charity started by raising money from donations as small as 50p and has built up its funds over time.

The charity's loans are now on average ?50 each, totalling ?60,000 per year.

"In a way this is what the record attempt is about.

"Let's take the smallest unit of money you have, put them together and use them to achieve something much, much greater," Mr Ryan said.


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