Belmont Citizen - Herald

Friday, February 29, 2008

Residents throng to hear humanitarian Greg Mortenson

Belmont Public Library Staff

Belmont, Mass. - Neither rain, nor snow, nor waiting in line, nor traveling half a mile to find a parking spot could dampen the spirits of those individuals who came to Belmont High School on Tuesday, Feb. 26 to hear Greg Mortenson, co-author of “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time.”

“I felt so lucky I had a chance to see him,” said resident Vicky Slavin, who waited in line in the rain for half an hour to make sure she could get a seat. “After I read the book, I just had to see him. He’s my hero.”

Mortenson, an Army veteran and former mountaineer, has made it his life’s work to build schools in the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He spoke in Belmont for the final event of One Book One Belmont, the town-wide reading program organized by the Belmont Public Library and co-sponsored by 11 civic organizations and town departments.

There was a buzz of anticipation as residents of Belmont and places as distant as Maine and Connecticut filled the 900-seat auditorium. Another 200 people were seated in the cafeteria where they watched a live broadcast of Mortenson’s presentation by the Belmont Media Center, the local cable TV station.

“In the 46 years I have been a Belmont resident, I have never seen such an outpouring of people, excitement, and involvement,” wrote Selectman Paul Solomon in an e-mail, thanking the Library, the Media Center, and everyone else who had helped organize and execute the program.

Shelagh Meier, secretary of the Friends of the Library, talked with police as she helped coordinate the volunteers and library staff who were acting as ushers.

“One of the officers said that in his 20 years as a police officer in the town, this was by far the largest crowd he had seen at any event in Belmont,” she said. “The police were pleased with how smoothly everything went.”

“I asked Greg Mortenson why he attracts such large crowds wherever he goes,” said Hal Shubin, chairman of the Board of Library Trustees, who delivered the opening remarks on Tuesday night. “His answer was simple: his message is about hope, and people want to hear it.”

Mortenson was introduced by Kathleen Ennis, Executive Director of Primary Source, a Watertown nonprofit that promotes global education for kindergarten-grade 12 teachers and their students — a goal, she said, similar to Mortenson’s.

“What education does is it gives a child hope,” said Mortenson, “If you have hope you can do anything … Education really empowers people. I can’t tell you how fierce a desire for education I see in many different parts of the world.”

Mortenson won over the crowd with his humility as he told the story of his transformation from mountaineer to humanitarian. In 1993, after a failed attempt to climb K2, Mortenson was nursed back to health by the inhabitants of an impoverished Pakistani village. He asked the village elder how he could repay the villagers’ kindness, and was told he could build the children a school so they did not have to learn outside in the cold.

He returned a few years later to build the school and has since, as director of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, built 63 more, with a special emphasis on educating girls. His book “Three Cups of Tea,” written with journalist David Oliver Relin and describing his efforts, has spent 55 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

“We can drop bombs, build roads, put in electricity, but if girls are not educated, the society won’t change,” he explained. “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual; if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

Studies have shown, he continued, that if girls are educated to at least a fifth grade level, the society is helped in three ways: by reducing infant mortality, reducing population explosion, and improving the quality of life.

He told the story of Aziza, the first girl in her remote, rural valley to go to school. In 1998, she began two years of training as a maternal health care worker. Before she returned to her valley to work in 2000, between five and 20 women died in childbirth each year. Since then, not one woman has died in childbirth. Her medical training cost about $800 and she is paid about $1 per day.

Mortenson explained that education is the single most effective way to promote peace, by providing an alternative to extremism and by empowering communities to make changes themselves, in the ways they determine are best.

“If we fight terrorism, it breeds fear. If we promote peace, it breeds hope. The real enemy is ignorance — it is ignorance that breeds hatred, whether it is in America or Afghanistan or Africa,” he continued.

The audience responded by opening their hearts and their checkbooks, giving Mortenson a standing ovation and thronging a table in the hall stocked with donation envelopes from the Central Asia Institute, Mortenson’s nonprofit organization. By the end of the evening, audience members had donated nearly $15,000 in cash and checks, even though Mortenson never explicitly asked for contributions.

“We are thrilled with the way the people of Belmont have embraced this whole project – reading the book, talking about the book, attending lectures and movies and concerts, and now making a significant contribution toward educating children in another part of the world,” said trustee chair Hal Shubin. “It’s an example of what we can accomplish when we all work together. Libraries do build community.”

After the talk, Mortenson stayed to sign books for every fan in a line that stretched around the auditorium, even though he was exhausted after a day that included presentations at the Belmont Day School in the morning and Bentley College in the afternoon.

Other audience members attended a reception, sponsored by the Belmont Library Foundation, where they drank tea together and ate Pakistani snacks.