Duluth News Tribune
March 20, 2008
'Three Cups of Tea' author’s speech praised with
applause of thousands
Will Ashenmacher
It’s safe to say the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center auditorium has seen its share of standing ovations when performances are over.
But standing ovations before the performance, such as the kind that greeted author Greg Mortenson at the start of his Wednesday night presentation, are a little rarer.
Mortenson, whose book “Three Cups of Tea” was chosen for this year’s citywide reading project, gave a laid-back speech about his life and work to an estimated 2,300 people Wednesday evening.
Mortenson, a Minnesota native, probably found the adulation that greeted him refreshing, considering the substantial setbacks he has met in the past decade trying to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A Muslim cleric once issued a religious edict against him for trying to educate girls, and a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan reduced schools to rubble. The book “Three Cups of Tea” only sold about 20,000 hardcover copies — far from the 400,000 the book company had hoped for.
But Mortenson, who said he embraces failure as a means to inform future work, continued undaunted past these obstacles.
The paperback version of “Three Cups of Tea” has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 weeks — “I think the message of the book, that we need to promote education and literacy, is something that all Americans can identify with and get behind,” he said — and his program has at last count built 64 schools that have educated some 25,000 children, 14,000 of whom were girls.
Today, Mortenson works with the Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit he founded, and raises money for schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the Pennies for Peace program, which encourages schoolchildren to bring in pennies for his project.
Mortenson said that’s been an effective way to raise money. He still remembers the first donation he got from an elementary school because it came on the heels of a dismal fundraising effort in which he s pent $112 mailing letters to 508 celebrities and got only a single $100 check in return.
“It wasn’t celebrities, it wasn’t movie stars, it wasn’t even adults,” Mortenson said. “It was kids, in all their innocence and purity, reaching out to help kids halfway across the world.”
After Mortenson’s hourlong speech, students from Barnum Elementary School presented him with a check for $443.58 and Hannah Wodrich, a student from Congdon Park Elementary, told him the school had raised more than $400 in its Pennies for Peace program.
Audience members said they were impressed with Mortenson’s account of his peace-building work abroad.
“He’s inspiring,” said Mary Dodge of Duluth. “I think that comes from his humility. But this turnout — it’s not about him. It’s about peace.”
Matt Luczak, a junior at Denfeld, read “Three Cups of Tea” in his AP World History class.
“I thought it was very interesting,” he said. “Especially on how different other parts o f the world are.”
© Duluth News Tribune 2008