UnitedHealthcare Donates $2 Million to Help Build Welcome Site and Sponsor Penny Drive

July 28, 2011 – 9/11 Memorial Board Chair and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels and New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott today announced the "Pennies for the Memorial" campaign for children to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, and to support educational programs for the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which opens in 2012.

Bloomberg also announced that UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) company, is donating $2 million to the campaign and toward the cost of the Welcome Site, which millions of visitors will pass through before entering the memorial. "United Healthcare's generosity allows more than one million students in our city the opportunity to support the memorial and be a part of its creation," said Mayor Bloomberg. "We are building the memorial both to honor all those we lost and to ensure that as new generations come of age, they can fully understand the devastating losses we suffered – and inspiring heroism we witnessed – on that tragic day. I would like to thank UnitedHealthcare for supporting this city's school children and the memorial." The campaign for the city's public, private and parochial schools will begin Sept. 12, by encouraging 1.3 million students to donate a penny to the memorial at the World Trade Center site. Each student will receive a special rubber pin designed with the memorial logo to commemorate the memorial's opening and the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

UnitedHealthcare's sponsorship will cover the cost of producing and distributing the pins, and help build the Welcome Site, where visitors enter before walking onto the memorial. "Many of our children are to know or remember what happened on 9/11, and how our country came together to recover and rebuild in the aftermath. This simple but meaningful campaign will encourage more than a million children to build a brighter future, and hopefully instill in them an understanding that 9/11 is part of an ongoing story, one that continues to shape our world," Daniels said. "The organization is very grateful for UnitedHealthcare's support in this effort." "The educational programming supported by the penny drive will teach our children how Sept. 11, 2001 forever changed this city, this nation and the world," Walcott said. "By directly involving students in this initiative, we hope to instill in them the value of community and teach them how our city united to heal and rebuild." "The people of UnitedHealthcare – both in New York and around the country – are honored and humbled to be a part of this memorial," said Steve Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth Group. "We want to help preserve the memory of the 3,000 people killed here that day and honor the sacrifices of so many first-responders. We believe that this memorial will be an important force in helping heal and inspire our generation and future generations of Americans." UnitedHealthcare has more than 3,500 employees in New York and serves the health care needs of more than 3.6 million New Yorkers.

The 9/11 Memorial will be dedicated on Sept. 11, in a commemoration ceremony open to family members of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993, attacks. The memorial opens to the general public by reservation on Sept. 12. Free visitor passes can be reserved online.

About the National September 11 Memorial & Museum

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is the not-for-profit corporation created to oversee the design, raise the funds, and program and operate the memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site. The memorial and museum will be located on eight of the 16 acres of the site. The memorial will be dedicated on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and will open to the public the following day. The museum will open in 2012. The memorial will remember and honor the nearly 3,000 people who died in the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993. The design, created by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, consists of two pools formed in the footprints of the original Twin Towers and a plaza of trees. The museum will display monumental artifacts linked to the events of 9/11, while presenting intimate stories of loss, compassion, reckoning and recovery that are central to telling the story of the 2001 attacks and the aftermath. It will communicate key messages that embrace both the specificity and the universal implications of the events of 9/11; document the impact of those events on individual lives, as well as on local, national, and international communities; and explore the continuing significance of these events for our global community. When the memorial opens, construction will continue on the other World Trade Center projects and free visitor passes will be temporarily required.

Follow the memorial & museum on Twitter: @sept11memorial.