NAVY COMPASS
Sailors & U.S. Marines hear unique viewpoint from best-selling author
By MCC Bill Gowdy Friday, 26 June 2009
SAN DIEGO (June 25, 2009)-- Individual Augmentee (IA) and Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Support Assignment (GSA) sailors currently assigned to the Navy Mobilization and Processing Site (NMPS) at Naval Base San Diego (NBSD) were treated to a presentation on life in the rural hinterlands of Afghanistan and an interesting perspective on the war by a best-selling author.
Greg Mortenson, author of the N.Y. Times best-seller Three Cups of Tea, offered stories of his experiences and unique views that are increasingly being shared by senior military leaders.
Many of his views run counter to what is considered conventional wisdom.
Read more - click here . . .
http://www.navycompass.com/index.php/top-stories/1623-mccawsw-bill-gowdy-
WEST POINT — Best-selling author Greg Mortenson will deliver a public lecture on Tuesday night to Army cadets taking a Military Science Counterinsurgency Operations course at West Point.
Mortenson wrote “Three Cups of Tea,” a story about his effort to fight terrorism and promote peace by building schools in impoverished parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of 2008, he's established more than 78 schools for roughly 28,000 children.
Mortenson's work has been rife with conflict. In 1996, he survived an eight-day armed kidnapping in Pakistan. In 2003, he escaped a firefight between feuding Afghan warlords by hiding under animal hides in a truck heading for a leather-tanning factory.
After 9/11, he received hate mail and death threats from Americans who were angry about his education efforts for Muslim children.
In August 2008, Pakistan's government gave Mortenson its highest civil award, the Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan) for his humanitarian efforts. Pakistan's president will confer the award on March 23 in Islamabad.
“Mortenson’s involvement in central Asia is critical to a holistic approach to assisting other countries,” said Maj. James Spies, the Counterinsurgency Operations course director at West Point.
“The military has re-learned the lessons of counterinsurgency that point out the need to build up the whole of a society to assist them in solving the core problems that created an insurgency.”
The lecture will take place in Thayer Hall’s Robinson Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Attendees should enter West Point through Thayer or Stoney Lonesome gates and bring valid identification. Vehicles are subject to search. Visitors may park in Clinton Lot or other available spaces.
www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090309/NEWS/90309037
(c) 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Greg Mortenson, with his son Khyber and daughter Amira, visit with students at the Gultari war refugee girls school built in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan in 2007. But when Mortenson visited a fourth-grade class in Houston, he realized the kids were struggling with the adult-level book. That prompted his wife, Tara Bishop, to suggest once again that he write a version for children.“Kids are so excited,” Bishop said, especially about Mortenson’s Pennies for Peace program, which allows children here to raise pennies that will buy pencils and school supplies for students in Pakistan. “It would feel empowering if kids could read it themselves.”Two years later, her idea is being realized.Two children’s books based on Mortenson’s story are being released today. One is a half-length version for young readers, entitled “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World One Child at a Time.” It has a forward by famed primatologist Jane Goodall, plus photos, maps, a timeline, glossary and list of who’s who, as well as information about how kids can get involved and help Pennies for Peace.
Advertisement The second is a picture book illustrated by artist Susan Roth called “Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg and Three Cups of Tea.”Mortenson and his 12-year-old daughter, Amira, are set to appear this morning on NBC’s “Today” show to talk about the books. It’s the first stop in a national tour that will include the United Nations Children’s Forum and a book expo in Los Angeles.Amira, who has traveled to Pakistan with her family three times, discusses what life is like for children in Pakistan and Afghanistan from a kid’s point of view in a 30-page question-and-answer interview in the young-readers book.“I think it’s important for kids to know, no matter how small you are, you can make a difference in the world,” Amira said.Chatting with the seventh-grader Tuesday, as she sat next to her dad in the family’s Bozeman home, it quickly became clear that she has a confidence and self-possession far beyond her years. When they speak to groups, it’s her dad who is more introverted and Amira - a taekwando champ and Equinox Theatre alum - who is naturally outgoing.Still, she admitted the “Today” show, though “a huge adrenalin rush,” was making her nervous.Mortenson’s mission began in 1993, when he was saved by Pakistani villagers after his failed attempt to climb K-2. Seeing village kids learning by sitting on the ground and scratching in the dirt with sticks, he made a rash promise to build a school.Back home, he struggled to raise a few thousand dollars to keep his promise. One big break came when children in his mother’s Wisconsin school raised $623 in pennies. Mortenson built the first school, and that snowballed into working with other villages to build more schools, aimed especially at educating girls, in remote areas where the Taliban has attacked hundreds of government schools.“I think their greatest fear is not the bullet but the pen,” Mortenson said. “The real enemy is ignorance n ignorance that causes hatred. To overcome it we need compassion and education.”So far, he said, his nonprofit Central Asia Institute has built 78 schools, and runs another four dozen, educating 28,000 children.Thanks largely to word of mouth and book groups, his book, co-authored with David Relin, has sold more than 2 million copies in paperback and been on the New York Times bestseller list 102 weeks. It has become required reading from Montana universities to the high school population of New Hampshire. He has gotten e-mail from such notable readers as Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.Pennies for Peace, meanwhile, has mushroomed among students, growing from 270 schools last year to 3,200 today.One stop on the Mortensons’ tour will be the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., which President Obama’s daughters now attend. Mortenson said his mother-in-law, Lila Bishop, taught there for 20 years. He and Amira have a chance to share their story with Sidwell students, and possibly First Lady Michelle Obama, he said.Mortenson said he is “very excited” about the new president, but concerned about Obama’s “brazen statements” about hunting down Osama bin Laden and plans to beef up the U.S. military in Afghanistan. He’d rather see something like the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.“They’re all thinking firepower, and what we really need is brain power,” he said. “It’s education that will determine if the next generation (in Pakistan and Afghanistan) is educated, or illiterate fighters. The stakes could not be higher.”
Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com.
www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2009/01/22/news/000cups.txt
USA TODAY
Mortenson's own heart started hollering 15 years ago, when the exhausted mountaineer lost his way in northeastern Pakistan's untrammeled Karakoram Range. After stumbling nearly 60 miles down a glacier to the Muslim hamlet of Korphe — where he was welcomed as the first foreigner the 400 villagers had encountered — he watched local children substitute mud-coated sticks for pencils in an apricot orchard that served as their only classroom.
Inspired by his parents' work to start a hospital and school on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and by fellow climber Edmund Hillary's charitable work in the Nepalese Himalayas, Mortenson promised he would return to Korphe to build a school.
But unlike most well-meaning tourists touched by encounters with Third World poverty, Mortenson delivered on his pledge.
To read more please follow this link: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2009-01-01-three-cups-of-tea_N.htm
OUTSIDE MAGAZINE
Feature article in print in OUTSIDE Dec. 2008 issue. Posted online in January 2009.
NPR National Radio
WHEN Greg Mortenson, a six-foot-four night-nurse and mountaineer from Montana, first visited Pakistan in 1993 to climb K2, the world's second-highest peak, he failed in his mountain quest but ended up doing more to win hearts and minds in the region than any amount of official American propaganda.
For complete article, please click here.
Photo courtesy of Gary Smaby/2008Minnesota Public Radio (NPR)
Friday, March 7, 2008
Mid-Morning with Kerri Miller: Man on a mission for education
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/midmorning/?date=03-07-2008
Greg Mortenson MPR interview at the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota.
Mortenson was the plenary speaker with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate keynote Muhammed Yunus and economist Jeffrey Sachs.
2008 Nobel Peace Prize Forum weblink:
www.cord.edu/Academics/Events/Peaceprizeforum
Daily Telegraph UK
February 16th, 2008
Pakistan Free to Learn
Jonathan Foreman
After a disastrous attempt to climb K2, former US Army medic Greg Mortenson had to be nursed back to health by the inhabitants of a remote and impoverished Pakistani village. He vowed to repay them by building a local school, and has now built more than 60 in similar areas across south Asia. Jonathan Foreman meets him.
Shi'ite Muslim girls play in the grounds of Jafarabad Community Girls School. Behind are the high peaks surrounding the Shigar Valley
Lake Oswego Review
January 17, 2008
Tickets for ‘Three Cups’ go quickly
They were the hottest ticket in town, pun intended
More than 1,000 people filled the Lake Oswego Public Library on Saturday to stand in line for a pair of free tickets to hear “Three Cups of Tea” authors Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin speak Feb. 6 as a part of this year’s Lake Oswego Reads program.
When the library opened at 10 a.m., there were already people waiting for the 2:30 p.m. distribution of 1,000 tickets.
“Three Cups of Tea” supporters followed the taped line on the floor that wrapped around the book stacks on the main floor of the library.
People sat on the floor, read books, discussed “Three Cups of Tea,” knitted, drank tea and had fun. By 1 p.m., organizers estimated that the line had more than 250 people. By 2 p.m., there were more than 450 people waiting with the line leading to the second floor.
“It was so exciting. There was such a buzz throughout the library and you could feel the anticipation,” said Lake Oswego resident Gregory Breuner, one of the lucky library members to receive two free tickets. “The people waiting introduced themselves to each other and discussed the books in front of them. We left the library with tickets and new friends.”
At 2:30 p.m. tickets were distributed, two per person, and they were gone in 20 minutes, just as LO Reads organizer Cyndie Glazer predicted.
More than 500 people were turned away when the tickets ran out.
Lake Oswego Reads organizers were surprised and thrilled with the response to hearing Relin and Mortenson speak. Because of the high demand for tickets, Glazer said library officials plan to check Craigslist and eBay to see if people post them for sale – and if so, how much they sell for.
Although there is not a waiting list, people can show up on Feb. 6 at Lake Oswego High School and if there are seats available at 6:45 p.m., they will be seated in the cafeteria, where guests will be able to see and hear the authors talk on large screens.
The blue tickets are for the auditorium and the red tickets are for the cafeteria, officials said. The tickets note that there is no admission after 6:45 p.m. for the 7 p.m. presentation.
Mortenson will travel to Lake Oswego from his home in Bozeman , Mont. , while Relin lives in Portland . They will both talk at a student-only event at Lakeridge High School earlier in the day.
Library officials plan to solicit donations for Mortenson’s non-profit, the Central Asia Institute, during his evening appearance and through a elementary school program, “Pennies for Peace.”
This author event is made possible in part by a grant from the gOregon Council for the Humanities, a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OCH’s grant program. The Oregon Cultural Trust, which invests in Oregon arts, humanities and heritage, also helped fund OCH’s grant program.
This is the second annual Lake Oswego Reads and the goal of the program is to strengthen civic pride, foster discussion among residents and bring the community together through the common bond of reading. It gives a forum in which to talk about different themes, concepts and issues in the book and a means to access related experiences.
To find out about all the events planned around “Three Cups of Tea” during February, go to www.lakeoswegolibrary.org and click on the Lake Oswego Reads box.
http://www.lakeoswegoreview.com
© 2008 Lake Oswego Review. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.
The following excerpt has been taken from Colorado Springs Independent Newspaper.
The following is an excerpt from Philadelphia Inquirer syndicated columnist, Trudy Rubin, on her recent December 2007 visit with Greg Mortenson and Central Asia Institute in Pakistan.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Worldview: The Lesson Jihadis Fear
In remote Pakistan , Greg Mortenson is besting extremists by building schools.
By Trudy Rubin
Pakistan has made news lately as the world's most dangerous country: a nuclear-armed state that has become a base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other fanatic Islamists.
But on my trip there last month, I saw an antidote to this nightmare, a route out of this trap - if Pakistan 's government and the West would only seize it. I traveled to mountain villages with Greg Mortenson, a former mountain climber who has built fifty five schools in Pakistan , and eight in Afghanistan .
Mortenson got lost 15 years ago descending from K2 , and promised to build a school for the villagers who rescued and nursed him. His formula for countering extremism is summed up in the title of his best-selling book: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.
<click here> for complete article.
National Awards for Citizen Diplomacy announced Award Ceremony to be held February 12, 2008 in Washington, D.C.
Following is an excerpt from USA Today article on Greg Mortenson and "Three Cups of Tea". For detailed article please visit USA Today's weblink below:USA TODAY
Mountaineer builds schools in 'Three Cups of Tea'
December 26, 2007
By Bob Minzesheimer
A surprise best seller this season is a non-fiction book, set in Pakistan and Afghanistan , that was published 21 months ago to limited notice.
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin has climbed the lists, thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations and a tireless author with an inspiring story.
Tea describes how Mortenson, an American mountaineer, found a new cause: building schools, mostly elementary and especially for girls, in 1993 during a failed attempt to climb the K2 peak on Pakistan 's border.
www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-12-19-three-cups_N.htm
West Coast:
Seattle Post Intelligencer interview with President Clinton
NBC Nightly News covered Cetral Asia Institute and Greg Mortenson in their "Making a Difference" segment. Click the following link to view the story and watch the video that was aired:
http://bozemandailychronicle.com/pakistan/pakistan1.php
Photo: Deirdre Eitel - Greg Mortenson talks with his friend and supporter Mehdi Ali in the lobby of the Indus Hotel in Mortenson: Regular guy gets big results
By KARIN RONNOW Chronicle Staff Writer
Note: This is the last of a five part Sunday weekly feature by Bozeman Chornicle editor Karin Ronnow and photographer Deirdre Eitel who spent several weeks following Greg Mortenson and the work of Central Asia Institute in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the summer of 2007.
All five features are available on subscription to the
When Greg Mortenson was 3 months old, his parents packed him up in
“When he was 2 or 3 years old, one day I couldn't find him,” said his mother, Jerene Mortenson. “And I looked outside and there he sat in the pathway with an old beggar and the cookie jar.
“Greg was handing the old beggar cookies and the two of them were having this conversation. He didn't just give him something, they were talking. And that just sums up how Greg has been all his life,” she said.
Now, at 49, Greg Mortenson heads the Bozeman-based Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit organization he founded. Instead of cookies, he's delivering education to children, especially girls, in some of the most isolated villages of northern
His success and a bestselling book about his life, “Three Cups of Tea,” has made him a bit of a celebrity - both at home and in the areas where he works - and that takes a toll on him and on his family. But it hasn't changed who he is at heart. He's one of those rare birds, driven by a sincere compassion for disenfranchised people about whom few others know or care.
“Even as a child I was deeply affected and disturbed by seeing really impoverished people starving or dying,” Mortenson said. “If I had extra food, I always wanted to share it. And now it's hard to keep my balance because I see so much poverty and hurting and suffering. It really takes a concerted effort, stamina and sometimes courage to remove yourself a little bit.
“But I always think it's important that you touch and smell and feel poverty, extreme poverty. You have to do that to understand it. You can't do it from a think tank in
And he really means that, said retired Lt. Col. Ilyas Ahmad Mirza of
“He loves those people, he listens to them, he lives with them,” Mirza said. “Their houses are dirty and smelly, but it doesn't matter. Greg goes and stays with them for days. He's a different breed.”
REGULAR GUY
One thing Mortenson is not is vain. He's about as humble as they come. All of the attention he's getting, the success of “Three Cups of Tea,” the speaking engagements, newspaper and magazine articles, TV interviews, are seen by him solely as opportunities to build more schools.
He is not a man on whom the mantel of celebrity and greatness rest weightlessly. Rather, Mortenson is far more at ease with his self perception as "a regular guy."
He comes from truly humble beginnings. His family never had much money. After
When he got back, he attended
He was a trauma nurse and a mountain climber before he started the Central Asia Institute. In 1995, he married Tara Bishop, a psychologist, and they now have two children, Amira, 11, and Khyber, 7.
Mortenson has some quirks, just like everyone else. He is constantly running late. He sometimes forgets appointments.
“I'm still not very socially adept at the wining and dining” part of fundraising, he said. “Often I show up late and I don't even have socks on.”
Perhaps it goes back to growing up in
It is one of his “maddening aspects,” Bishop agreed.
In his own defense, Mortenson said, “To me, the world is an oyster. I am very curious about a lot of things, so I take time to do everything, and now I am perpetually late. I'm just so busy,” he said.
He is that. He is on the road at least six months a year, overseas and crisscrossing the
“Our lives have really changed since the book was published, as far as the level of demand for his time,” Bishop said. “It was already building its own momentum, but until then, if they didn't go to a talk, people didn't know about him. Then all of the sudden it just geometrically took off.”
Mortenson's perpetual lateness is less of an issue overseas.
“In Baltistan, in the language, there is no sense of time,” Mortenson said. “You can say, ‘I go to Korphe,' which could mean you will be there tomorrow, or you were there yesterday, or you were there 10 years ago. Time is irrelevant. They don't have watches over there. I enjoy working like that, things work well and we get things done.”
Nevertheless, when he gets to
“It's like he's a rock star or something,” Doug Chabot, a mountain climber and friend of Mortenson's from
In July, some of the teachers at remote institute schools had traveled long distances to visit Mortenson during his week in Skardu. Although he has staff in country to make decisions and keep the ball rolling, they often defer to him. Besides, Mortenson is the one who people want to see and talk to.
“He has this incredibly busy schedule when he goes over there, because not only is he checking on schools, but he has all these relationships with people,” Chabot said. “He doesn't sleep much when he's over there. When he's in work mode, it's pretty impressive.”
RETREAT
When he isn't working, Mortenson is often hunkered down in his basement office at home. The small space has, over the years, become his sanctuary.
The 8-by-10-foot room is cluttered with photos, satellite phones, old Texas Instrument calculators, camera parts and books, lots of books, on all four walls up to the ceiling. They are organized into sections on terrorism, poverty, nonprofits, fundraising,
“I don't drink much or smoke,” he said. “The one vice I have is I am a voracious reader and I buy a lot of books.”
Over the years he has developed a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the history, culture and religion of
As a kid, his mom said, “Greg's strongest areas were language, math and science.”
A few minutes later, she went back to that thought. “He does have a particular facility with languages. When he was 8 or 9 years old, we were in
“But Greg said, ‘She's asking are we leaving today and should she change the sheets or just make the beds.' It amazed me. That was what she was asking us.”
Mortenson attended an international school his parents started in
But his appetite for knowledge is just a part of who he is.
“We had a set of children's encyclopedias and he started with A and read through the whole set,” Jerene Mortenson said. “We didn't have a television. Greg liked facts. I remember he got a ‘Guinness Book of World Records' that really intrigued him.”
These days, he prefers nonfiction to fiction. And he prefers reading to television, music or even parties.
“He doesn't watch movies,” Bishop said. “He doesn't have a pulse at all on popular media.”
He also doesn't, at this point, have a lot of friends he socializes with at home, Bishop said.
“He doesn't have time for it. His friends are his staff. They get him, his quirkiness,” she said. “He's a little cynical about western, American culture, the power stuff that's such a big part of how we interact here, the teasing, the one-up-manship and the humor around belittling. It baffles him.”
RELATIONSHIPS
Instead, he focuses on relationships he needs overseas to accomplish his goals of literacy and peace - a lesson he said he learned from his dad, Dempsey.
“My dad worked closely with the Tanzanians, especially his handyman, John Moshe,” Mortenson said. “The expats often scoffed at him, saying he should have the upper hand and be the boss. But he believed everybody was part of the team.”
Mortenson has integrated that philosophy into his own work in
“If anything happens to me, everything will be taken care of over there,” he said. “We have amazing staff and we have amazing community support.”
That staff, his central team, is largely a result of serendipity, composed of people that Mortenson tripped over in his work and later hired. But the team is devoted to Mortenson. And the feeling is mutual.
“I consider my staff to be family,” Mortenson said. “They are prepared to give up everything they have to help
“They are the ones who go to the village with the hardened mullah, trying to convince them to send girls to school, who really push the envelope in working with different ethnic groups, Sunni and Shia, and different politicians, bringing the hardest opponents together with the proponents and work until they come up with some solution.”
Most of the staff are not highly educated, either, he said, “yet they are willing to work very had to learn difficult skills.”
They have flaws, he said. Sometimes they push too hard when it might be better to give people time.
“I love them dearly as my family, but sometimes I have to remind them that to do business, sometimes it takes" time, he said.
TIME UNPLUGGED
While a lot of the village work might be handled by the in-country staff, the fundraising and public speaking is exclusively Mortenson's job. And it takes a toll.
“The success of all this has forced me to become a much more public person,” he said. “I'm rather shy and reserved by nature, and at first it was really hard on me. But the more I do this, the more comfortable it is. And I really want to do this because I want to promote education and promote peace. But I have to raise money.
“The hard part is that I've been married for 12 years and more than 65 months of that time, I haven't been with my family.”
“It's a tricky thing for Greg,” Bishop said. “I think he would like to do it all. I don't think can't is in his vocabulary. He really is committed to those little kids over there. And he has a huge heart.
“But I miss him, that's the biggest thing. I'd like more time with him. That's the part that makes me sad.”
The other thing Bishop would like her husband to do is take a little better care of himself; he's paying a price for the pace he keeps.
“I get frustrated because his life is so overwhelming,” she said. “I'm happy for his success and what it means for the world and for him. But I wish he could have some more time to catch up with himself, to be able to slow down a little bit and fully think. He's truly an introvert and he's not getting what all introverts need, which is time unplugged."
Karin Ronnow is at kronnow@dailychronicle.com
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2007/10/07/news/000guy.txt
© 2007 Bozeman Daily Chronicle. All Rights Reserved.
S.D. connections helped author of book
By David Kranz
If you have been in a bookstore in recent months, you probably have seen "Three Cups of Tea" prominently displayed on the shelf.
I was intrigued by the cover but never picked it up. It wasn't until Jack Rentschler told me about it that my interest was piqued, particularly by the
Greg Mortenson's story, co-authored with David Oliver Relin, is a powerful account of the challenges he's faced in
After descending the mountain, he was separated from those he traveled with, coming upon a poverty-stricken Pakistani village - a place that left a permanent impression in his mind, a place where children had little or no opportunity to receive an education.
Failure to conquer the mountain led Mortenson to reprioritize his life, focusing on becoming a humanitarian. His goal would be improving and expanding educational opportunities in these countries.
He only would be content making sure these children's educational needs were met, particularly addressing the educational opportunities for girls. Today, 58 schools have grown out of Mortenson's mission in
Achieving the goal would create new concerns, resulting in his campaign against Islamic fundamentalists who would sometimes find their members in the religious schools.
Mortenson's ultimate objective to educate in the face of the turmoil of war is defined in a chapter aptly titled, "The Enemy Is Ignorance."
"If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9-11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs," Mortenson writes.
His acknowledgements in the book include help he received along the way and covers four pages, including these mentions: "From South Dakota, and my USD alma mater, I thank four noteworthy individuals who touched my life: Lars Overskei, Tom Brokaw, Dr. Dan Birkeland, and Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and the D.C.-based Freedom Forum, from which I received the 2004 Free Spirit Award."
Incidentally, Brokaw was one of 580 celebrities he wrote to, asking for money to build a school in that village. Of those 580 letters, Brokaw was the only one who responded with money.
Mortenson returned in 2006 to deliver the USD commencement address.
© 2007 Souix Falls Argus Leader. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.
Three Cups of Tea is # 5 this week on NY Times bestseller list (paperback nonfiction) for week # 34
KITSAP SUN (Washington)Young Audiences Drink In ‘Three Cups Of Tea' Author
By Tristan Baurick
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Bainbridge Island - It's been said that Greg Mortenson has won more "hearts and minds" in a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan than the mightiest military force on earth.
What's this affable ex-mountain climber's secret weapon?
"Literate, educated girls," Mortenson told a crowd of students at Bainbridge High School on Wednesday. "You can drop bombs but unless you educate girls, a society won't change."
Mortenson is the subject of the bestselling book "Three Cups of Tea." Written in partnership with journalist David Oliver Relin, the book recounts how Mortenson -- then a dedicated mountaineer -- veered from the summit of K2 and blazed a new path toward improved education in some of the most isolated regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mortenson, through his Central Asia Institute, has built more than 60 schools that support 18,000 students per year.
A better-educated population acts as a bulwark against violent extremist groups that regularly recruit from the region's poor and illiterate, Mortenson said. And better-educated girls make for future mothers with important lessons to impart to their sons.
"There's an old saying: 'When you educate a boy, you educate an individual,'" he said. "'But when you educate a girl, you educate a community.'"
The notion of putting girls in classrooms wasn't an easy sell in conservative Islamic regions, but Mortenson's vision has earned many believers abroad and at home.
Bainbridge senior Alex Oechsli is one of Mortenson's most recent converts.
"International relations start at the basic level with education," Oechsli said after Mortenson's speech. "Going town by town, person by person is how you make a real difference. That's how (Mortenson) has gone about it. He's shown the right way to do it."
Oechsli and many other students library branch manager Cindy Harrison. "I think that's because people are hungry for a positive, uplifting story from that part of the world, which seems entangled in an impossible situation."
At an afternoon appearance at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island, over 200 people from 45 different book clubs attended a talk, where the bookstore said that he has sold more copies of "Three Cups Of Tea" than Harry Potter books.
With thousands of children enrolled in schools where none previously existed, "Three Cups of Tea" has no shortage of inspiring true tales.
raised their hands when asked whether they'd read "Three Cups of Tea." The book, which has sold over a half-million copies, was assigned reading in Bainbridge High social studies classes and was on the summer reading list for Poulsbo's West Sound Academy, where Mortenson also spoke Wednesday.
The Bainbridge Island Public Library co-sponsored an evening event with Mortenson that was expected to draw thousands to the Bainbridge High gym.
"This book has resonated in a special way with people," said Bainbridge
One of Mortenson's favorites is the story of a girl who grew up in a remote mountain village and went on to become her region's first health-care worker. After graduating from one of Mortenson's schools and receiving a college education, the girl helped dramatically reduce the annual rate of women dying during childbirth.
"It wasn't easy for her," said Mortenson. "Young boys threw stones at her when she tried to go to school. Teachers refused to teach her. She had to sit outside and listen to lessons outside. But she graduated. She learned how to deliver babies and about immunizations, and not one woman has died giving birth in her area."
If the goal of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and other parts of the Islamic world is peace, Mortenson argues that spending money on books produces a much higher return than bombs.
"We spent $95 billion last year (for the war) in Iraq," he said. "That's $10 million per hour. But it takes just a few dollars per month to send a child to school. If we did that, think of the incredible change that would have on the world."
© 2007 Kitsap Sun. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission
Greg Mortenson, the Bozeman man who has garnered international acclaim for his efforts to build schools in remote, mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, challenged MSU students to find their own ways to change the world. http://www.montana.edu/wwwprov/
Interview Excerpts:
Three Cups of Tea 3CT is #4 on NY Times bestseller list (nonfiction paperback). 3CT on NY list for 23 weeks in a row! Listing in NY Times Book section for July 15 and 22.
"Three Cups of Tea" is July 15 # 4 (highest yet) NY Times bestseller for week 22 in a row. Thank you everyone (especially from all the kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan)!
The Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA) invited CAI to their annual convention in Orlando, FL to help raise awareness among the Pakistani Physician community. CAI volunteers Sadia and Tauheed Ashraf manned a booth and Greg Mortenson gave a presentation to a full house. Special thanks to Dr. Nadeem Kazi, Dr. Tariq Cheema and Dr. Saima Zafar for their help in making this event a success for CAI.
