25 / Promote Peace - One School at a Time
The article about the flip side of the anti-Afghan-war coin alerted me to Greg Mortenson. He facilitates - through the Central Asia Institute - the building of secular schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a means to keep children (especially girls, who are denied schooling by the Taliban) away from indoctrinating Islamic madrassas.
Terrorism flourishes where ignorance allows distorted fundamentalist beliefs to take hold. The best counter-attack against terrorism is two-pronged: Education and aid, i.e. assistance with infrastructure. If children are educated secularly, if their villages and towns are given structures and institutions that help a society to flourish, if individuals share in a prosperous, thriving community, terrorism is deprived of its life-blood, its oxygen. That is why the War on Terror is so ill advised; it recruits terrorists - whereas activists like Mortenson help build a society with well educated people, where literate mothers will not allow their sons to be recruited to nihilistic, irrational and destructive Istamic causes and suicide attacks. Terrorism is stifled at the grass roots.
Greg Mortenson was a mountaineer, whose attempt on the second highest mountain in the Himalaya, K2, lead him, weak and exhausted, to a village where he was cared for by the villagers. To pay the remote community back for their compassion, Mortenson said he would build a school for the village. To raise the necessary money, Mortenson and Jean Hoerni founded the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organisation. It promotes education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mortenson believes that education and literacy for girls globally is the most important investment all countries can make to create stability, bring socio-economic reform, decrease infant mortality, decrease the population explosion, and improve health, hygiene, and sanitation standards globally. Mortenson believes that 'fighting terrorism' only perpetuates a cycle of violence, and that there should be a global priority to 'promote peace' through education and literacy, with an emphasis on girls' education. "You can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but unless the girls are educated, a society won't change", is an often quoted statement made by Mortenson. Because of community 'buy-in', which involves getting villages to donate free land, subsidized or free labor ('sweat equity'), free wood and resources, the schools have local support and have been able to avert retribution by the Taliban or other groups opposed to girls' education.
Mortenson and David Oliver Relin are co-authors of the New York Times best selling book Three Cups of Tea (I am reading it currently, and I can't put it down!) USA TODAY reported on January 2nd, 2009, that Mortenson has established over 78 schools which help educate over 28,000 students, including 18,000 females. Pennies for Peace is a program Mortenson launched to involve American school-children in fund-raising efforts for the schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
O.k. I have finished Three Cups of Tea - it is one of the most inspirational stories I have come across for a long time, a can't-put-down type of read, highly recommended. It outlines a true, shocking, sensible and ever so obvious alternative to the War on Terror.
(with research from Wikipedia)