In war-ravaged Afghanistan, Greg Mortensen, the author of the best-selling book ‘Three Cups of Tea’ is… Fighting Terrorism With Schools

In 1993, after my youngest SISTER died of cerebral epilepsy, I made a pledge to travel to Pakistan and place her favorite necklace atop K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. Sadly, I broke that promise. Forced to turn back just 2000 feet shy of the summit, I compounded my failure by getting lost on a glacier. Eventually, I staggered into a tiny village called Korphe, where the impoverished residents gave me food, shelter—and a mission.

One afternoon, I watched 82 children scratch their lessons in the dirt with sticks. Among them was a girl named Chocho, who appealed to me to come back one day and build Korphe a school—one that would be open to all children, even though, in that part of the world, the privilege of learning to read and write has traditionally been reserved for boys.

Three years later, I kept my promise. The organization I founded, the Central Asia Institute (CAI) http://matr.net/click.php?id=1383&url=https://www.ikat.org/ , has kept right on building. Today, in the mountains of rural Pakistan—where schools are scarce and all too often supported by the same radical Islamist money and ideology that fuels al-Qaeda and the Taliban—CAI now has 91 schoolhouses. We serve 19,000 students—three-quarters of them girls.

by Greg Mortenson

Full Story: http://www.parade.com/news/2009/11/22-fighting-terrorism-with-schools.html

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