Building schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan

You can find the following article, written by Steve Young for the the Argus Leader, at: http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100117/NEWS,1170325/1001/news. The article highlights how American Greg Mortenson was able to win the trust of villagers in remote parts of northeast Aganistan and northwest Pakistan, and, with donations from individuals and groups in the US, to build schools for children and youth, with special attention to increasing educational opportunities for girls. It is a remarkable story. And, above all else, it humanizes Afghan and Pakistan villagers. In the last analysis, they are basically like us, though, as a result of historical and geographical circumstances, with far fewer opportunities. In this story the villagers are not the passive recipients of government or international aid; rather, they are active in all vital decisions and in providing their skills and labor for the school and other projects. The work of Greg Mortenson provides examples of how there are peaceful alternatives to military interventions.

There is a caveat that comes to mind. The success of Greg Mortenson and the villagers with whom he worked, may be unusual in some ways. In these villages, there were respected elders, and then the villages as a whole, who came to trust Mortenson. This was a key factor. It may not be so easy to achieve these accomplishments in villages and areas that are already dominated by warlords or fundamentalist Taliban. Time will tell. What is clear, though, is that Mortenson has proven to be an inspiration for those who want, and believe in, peaceful change.

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Greg Mortenson left USD dreaming of the world’s tallest mountains and found his calling in education

Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders, America’s top generals and the warriors trekking over from South Dakota as National Guardsmen to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.

The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.
It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.

“He has a very innate knowledge of the culture from being exposed to it for so many years,” Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said by phone from Washington, D.C. “We have come to learn from Greg just how important things like education and literacy are. It has helped shape how we do our jobs.”

And this from Yankton native Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor for NBC: “You’re not going to win this war in the barrel of a gun. A lot of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and have been doing, involves efforts of people like Greg.

“He knows the culture. He knows that when you go out into the villages, it’s not 19th century, it’s 17th century. So the idea then that you can have education and a little bit of hope is an important component if we’re ever going to move forward in that part of the world. That’s why I think he is an important voice for people to hear.”

Mortenson’s voice has reached millions worldwide through his books, which chronicle his work in Central Asia.

It has found an audience in places such as Sioux Falls as well, where children at Hawthorne, Eugene Field, Discovery and other elementary schools have collected thousands of coins together with students at Augustana College to help build Mortenson’s schools through his “Pennies for Peace” program.

The effort at Hawthorne, which raised $1,200, particularly connected with Mortenson when he visited there in fall 2008, because more than 80 percent of its diverse student population comes out of poverty. “I visit lots of schools,” he said. “And Hawthorne was one of the most inspired, determined bunch of kids that wanted to help other kids. That really struck me.”

How Mortenson got the idea

Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.

At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992, on the eve of a trip to visit Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed in a cornfield. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.
“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”

Just a few years removed from his days in the halls at USD, working as an orderly at Dakota Hospital in Vermillion and, soon after, in health care at Deadwood and Rapid City, Mortenson spent 78 days on the mountain before the rigors stopped him 2,000 feet beneath the 28,261-foot peak.

He stayed behind as two friends tried for the summit. He would be their safety net if they needed help down the mountain. “I probably could have made it,” Mortenson said. “In my mind, I could have made it and died, and it would have been perfectly fine.”

But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and their bodies struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson and his friends headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.

During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.

So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him – and because of the resolve of Cho Cho, like his sister, to persevere despite her disability – Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.

Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Brokaw.

“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”

In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.Village gives the land and the labor

Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.

It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture. Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.

“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”

That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.

The Taliban fears education, especially for young girls, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a July 2009 New York Times piece on Mortenson. The war on terror is really a war of ideas within Islam, Friedman wrote. On the one side are the religious zealots who glorify martyrdom, who want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, and who want to keep women disempowered.

On the other side are those who embrace modernity, who want to open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men, Friedman said.Educated women can destroy the Taliban

Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.

Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.

When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.

“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.

When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.

“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”

That’s the message he has shared with Mullen and other military leaders, such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.

Kirby, the spokesman for Mullen, said Mortenson’s book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is required reading for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and encouraged for other units. As part of his work, Mortenson often briefs military units.

“We have come to realize over the course of these last eight years that we in the military can’t do it alone,” Kirby said. “In fact, what we have come to appreciate is that we shouldn’t try to do it all alone. There are certain things other people are more proficient at. Greg has helped us see that.”

The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan – people he calls “shura” – who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.

“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.

“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”

For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”

That comes as no surprise to those back in South Dakota and the Midwest who know him.
Brookings native Don Birkeland, a retired organizational psychologist, said Mortenson’s mother, Jerene, tells about 2-year-old Greg when the family was living in Tanzania and doing missionary work.

“She would look out her window, and there was Greg with the cookie jar, sharing it with a beggar,” Birkeland said.

That image of giving to the less fortunate resonated with her schoolchildren, said Cheryl Larson, principal at Hawthorne Elementary.

“Greg brought a great lesson to our children, that they could sense the value of their education, could sense the value of peace, and could learn the value of making a difference no matter how small we are,” Larson said. “We can still contribute and make a positive contribution to the global community. That’s what he showed us.”

Mortenson connects with the college crowds as well, said Julie Ashworth, an education professor at Augustana. In reading his books, her students learn that he struggled in college – first at Concordia College and later at USD – both with his studies and what he wanted to be.
“In that way, he’s not so different from many of them,” Ashworth said of her students. “But like him, they can choose to lead if they so choose. I think his is such a remarkable story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.”

It’s not so difficult, Mortenson said. That’s what he would tell the more than 300 South Dakota National Guardsmen in Afghanistan today with the 211th Engineer Co. of De Smet and Madison, and the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Sioux Falls.

That’s what he would tell those who haven’t left yet, either.

“To those from South Dakota or anywhere, I would say the same thing,” he said. “Listen to the elders when you get there. Be a teacher. Lend a hand when it’s asked for. That’s how we’ll win this war.”

Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.