Mortenson: Education promotes peace
05/09 -- “The real hope for peace is through education,” says author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson, the keynote speaker at the final General Session.
Mortenson described his efforts to develop more than 60 schools in poor, remote villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan—and why it is especially important to educate girls—an effort documented in his best seller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.
Initially, his publisher had wanted the subtitle to state “one man’s mission to fight terrorism,” but Mortenson argued against that language because “terrorism is all about fear,” he said. “To promote peace, you need to have compassion, you need to have courage, and most of all, you need to have education.”
Mortenson cited an African proverb to illustrate the importance of creating schools for girls: “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual; if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”
According to Mortenson, Gen. David Petraeus gleaned three messages from Three Cups of Tea: “We need to listen more. We need to have respect, and we need to build relationships.” The book is now required reading for all U.S. military personnel stationed in the area.
Mortenson showed a film during the session, narrated by his daughter Amira, explaining how he got started on his humanitarian mission to bring education to a region marked by poverty, illiteracy, and poor health care, and how he got American children to participate through the Pennies for Peace program.
In 1992, Mortenson’s sister, Christa, died of an epileptic seizure just before she had planned to visit the Iowa cornfield where the movie “Field of Dreams” was shot. Mortenson, an experienced mountain climber, conceived of a plan to honor her by placing her amber necklace on top of K2, the world’s second-highest mountain.
He almost made it to the top, but illness forced him to abandon the project. While recovering in the village of Khorfe, he noticed a group of children scratching in the dirt with sticks. When he learned the village wasn’t able to afford the $1 a day salary for a full-time teacher, he found another way to honor Christa—he would build a school for the village.
Back in the States, he sold his car and books to raise money and sent letters to hundreds of celebrities. He got few responses.
“But it was children who came through,” he said. After being invited to speak at an elementary school, a fourth-grader took up the cause, and his classmates collected $523.40 in pennies in six weeks. The Pennies for Peace program is now in 3,580 schools.
Mortenson encourages children to find something on their own to support. One student in Tampa, Fla., created the Little Red Wagon Foundation to help homeless children in the United States, and another student in California raised $58,000 to create soccer fields in Soweto in South Africa.
Mortenson is a firm believer in service learning, noting “It really gets kids inspired and can have a profound impact on global society.”