“I’m doing this project because I don’t want to lose you.”

That was part of Oxford Elementary School fifth-grader Emma Robinson’s heartfelt letter to the people in her family who smoke cigarettes.

She and fellow fifth-graders Ava Vogler and Carly DeTone are working hard to warn their loved ones and their community about the diseases and health conditions associated with smoking and convince them to quit.

“I hope a lot of people in my family quit smoking. I hope this inspires them,” Robinson said. “My (great) uncle died of lung cancer because he smoked.”

“I want the whole U.S.A. to know that (bad) stuff can happen to their body and they won’t be safe if they keep on smoking,” DeTone said.

Vogler hopes someday, all the cigarette factories will be “shut down.”

In her letter to her loved ones, Vogler wrote, “I know everyone can stop smoking because I know you have the heart to stop. I know you can do it.”

The students’ anti-smoking crusade is their International Baccalaureate (IB) Exhibition project.

“It’s the culmination of their learning with the IB program,” explained teacher and IB mentor Stephanie Niemi. “Students choose a topic that they’re passionate about and then they (research it and make a presentation). Through that, we hope that all students take some kind of action.”

Part of these girls’ action was to contact the local newspaper.

“They thought being interviewed would spread aware ness to adults who read the newspaper,” Niemi said. “We thought (the Leader’s) demographic would be more open to hearing persona stories from children (that might cause them to) stop and think a minute (about how smoking affects family relationships).”

During their research, the students learned about all the health problems caused by smoking such as a variety of cancers, lung diseases, heart disease and stroke. They learned how secondhand smoke can harm the health of nonsmokers, particularly children, who can suffer respiratory problems, ear infections and severe asthma attacks.

Robinson pointed out smoking a pack-a-day for a year causes one cup of tar to accumulate in the lungs.

Vogler, Robinson and DeTone learned about the myriad of poisonous chemicals produced by cigarettes. When burned, a cigarette creates more than 7,000 chemicals and at least 69 of them are known to cause cancer, according to the American Lung Association.

In an effort to further spread their anti-smoking message, the students took to the streets and staged a mini-protest outside OES on Friday afternoon. Their purpose was to send a message to parents and passersby.

“I see some parents smoking in the car and then, once they come to pick up their kids, they throw the cigarette out,” Robinson said. “That’s what I see.”

Around town, DeTone has noticed some parents smoking in their vehicles while babies are riding in the back seat.

“I feel bad for the baby,” she said. “I want the mothers or fathers to stop . . . and to not harm their kids.”

Niemi is quite impressed with the students.

“I think they’ve done an amazing job,” she said.

Smoking is a “big topic” and given the plethora of information that’s available, Niemi believes it would have been “easy” for them to go “all over the place” with the project.

But they didn’t do that.

She said they were able to “stay focused” on the information they needed, while “filtering out” facts that weren’t germane to their objective.

“They’ve done a really good job (of) working together,” Niemi said.