The below is an excerpt from the article by the same name appearing in this falls Shore Bulletin.
The
books Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson describe
the incredible work he has done with the Central Asia Institute (CAI)
since dedicating his life to building schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan
where government funding has not been available and the education of girls has
been unheard of. Greg originally
traveled to Pakistan in 1993 to climb K2, but he became lost and was found
disoriented near the remote village of Korphe, where the villagers there saved
his life. Subsequently, when Greg noticed the children in Korphe writing their
multiplication tables with sticks in the dirt, he promised to return and build
a school for them in the village.
Eventually, Greg raised enough funds to return to Korphe, and in 1997,
he fulfilled his promise to the villagers there. Since then, CAI has built more than one hundred additional
schools in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, many of which are for girls.
During
my sophomore year at the University of St. Andrews, I read Three Cups of Tea, and when I returned home during a school break,
I went to hear Greg speak at a book signing in Marblehead, Massachusetts. As he
autographed my copy of Three Cups of Tea,
I initially spoke to him in Arabic, telling him about my experiences in rural
China and the Middle East. During my junior year of high school, I had studied
abroad in Beijing and had traveled through much of rural China, where I had
stayed with families in peasant villages. I had also visited many schools in
rural China where I was able to donate school supplies for the children, and I
had volunteered in an orphanage in Beijing every week, teaching English in a
school for illegal Chinese migrant workers’ children. I shared with him that I
was now majoring in Arabic and had spent the past summer studying in Yemen, one
of the most conservative Islamic societies. Although I knew that the Central
Asia Institute did not accept volunteers or offer internships because of the
dangerous and sensitive nature of its work, I offered to help CAI in any way I
could. Greg wrote down his
personal email in the back of my book and asked me to email him.
