Speaker shares his efforts, inspires others

By Alexandra Batson
Western Herald

For Greg Mortenson, it all started as an attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2 mountain, and ended in the establishment of 78 schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Oct. 29 he travels to Gull Lake High School as a part of the Distinguished Speaker Series event, Sharing Three Cups of Tea.
Mortenson’s book “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time” is a retelling of a journey starting with a failed attempt to climb the world’s second highest mountain, the K2 located in Pakistan.

After being disoriented and wandering from his group, Mortenson found himself in a Pakistani village where the children wrote their lessons in the dirt with sticks. When he left he promised to come back to build a school for the village.

In an attempt to raise money, Mortenson wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen and prominent Americans, and sold everything he had, but only raised $2,400.

Many adults were inspired to start helping with the raising of money after a group of children from River Falls, Wisconsin donated $623.40 in pennies.

Since then Mortenson has founded 78 schools despite an armed kidnapping, many death threats and periods of long separation from his wife and children.

Mortenson is an author, philanthropist and a mountaineer whose book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years, sold three million copies, and was published in 34 countries.

In January 2009 a young reader’s edition of the book and a children’s picture book, “Listen to the Wind,” were introduced as well. Mortenson is the co-founder of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, as well as founder of Pennies for Peace.

He received Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his dedication to promoting education in rural areas, and was nominated this year by many bi-partisan U.S. Congressional representatives for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He has won 30 Humanitarian awards and 11 awards just for “Three Cups of Tea,” which is now required reading for U.S. senior military commanders, officers in the Norwegian War College, Forsvarsnett, U.S. Special Forces deploying to Afghanistan, Pentagon officers in counter-insurgency training, and Canadian Defense Ministry members.

Every year Mortenson travels to over 100 cities, this year including Gull Lake, lecturing to raise awareness about literacy and education, and to bring global peace and prosperity.

A book signing is usually included in his presentations as well.
Through his perspective of the region’s culture, history, geo-politics and development aspects, he shares commentary and photographs of a decade long journey promoting education.

Tickets to the Oct. 29 event are available online at the Gull Lake Community Schools Foundation Web site, www.glcs.org, and also at the Richland Community Library.
Cost is $10 for students and children, and $20 for adults.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=10985

Posted by heraldstaff on Oct 28 2009. Filed under A & E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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