"לפנות מוקשים, להציל חיים"

Heidi Kuhn is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder of Roots of Peace. She has led efforts to clear landmines in post-war zones around the world. She joined Bay Area Innovators to share how her team restores land and saves lives, one minefield at a time. Can you tell us a little bit the process of how the deminers, they go through, what they actually do and how dangerous is it for them to do this? So it's a very arduous, labor-intensive process. They have to go inch by inch with a device that looks like a hockey puck. It's like a metal detector. Metal detector, exactly. In pure silence, it's absolute concentration. In large areas that are agricultural, there's remote-controlled flail tractors that can comb the land. It'll detonate at the front end. But if you look outside at land and the terrain, it's often that you have to go inch by inch. The time and energy that it takes cost about $3 to put in a landmine and about $1,000 to take out. Please tell us what continues your motivation to do this. You tell us how you got started, but what motivates you every day to continue your work? When I walked my first minefield in January 2000 and saw the devastation of children who looked at my hand and said, Mrs. Kuhn, is it true that the children in America can hike the mountains and run the beaches without fear of landmines? They said, it must be heaven. And I looked at them and just my tears in my eyes were so deep because I think of the children sometimes here in America who are bored at summer. Where do I go when we're bored? To see these families, these people, humans who are suffering post-conflict, it keeps me going back because I know I can help. One more person, one more landmine out, one more grapevine planted, it keeps me going back.