Ft. Meyers News – Press (FL)

Saturday, March 21, 2008

Author's personal mission evolves into building schools: Mortenson in SW Fla. to talk about experiences

By Francesca Donlan

An amazing adventure began with a promise and a jar of pennies.

Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the bestseller “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . One School at a Time” (Penguin, $15), will share his story next week at three local events.

Jamie Ross of Naples and the members of the Collier Reserve Book Club in Naples are eager to hear Mortenson talk about his mission.

“The book is riveting,” Ross said. “Someone is actually doing something. That is what is so remarkable.”

The author’s life-changing journey to build schools abroad began with a failed attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range.

In 1993, Mortenson wanted to honor his younger sister’s memory.

She died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy. So he challenged himself to a physical quest.

He never got to the summit. He descended from the mountain exhausted and disoriented and inadvertently wandered away from his climbing group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without food, water or shelter, he stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering in a local village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand. Before he left, he promised to help them build a school.

He sold everything he owned to keep that promise. But he needed about $12,000 and had raised only $3,000. His luck began to change when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wis., donated $623 in pennies, thereby inspiring adults to take his cause more seriously.

Since the publication of his book last year, thousands of readers have taken notice.

“Three Cups of Tea” has been a bestseller for more than nine months and was Time magazine Asia Book of The Year.

The staff and students at Edison Park Creative and Expressive Arts Elementary School in Fort Myers are also working to change the world. For the past month, the school, parents and community have been collecting “Peace jars” to donate to Mortenson’s cause, “Pennies for Peace,” which builds schools.

Principal Charlotte Rafferty heard about Mortenson’s mission from a parent and wanted the school to get involved, said Assistant Principal Jamie Kirschner.

Rafferty pitched the idea to the students in the school auditorium and the pennies started pouring it.

“One student poured out his entire piggy bank,” Kirschner said. They have collected thousands of pennies so far. At the end of the school year, they intend to haul the pennies on stage and show all 21 classes what they have accomplished.

“There is no telling what could come from the hard work of these boys and girls,” Kirschner said. “It’s all about a passion for public education. Those kids have a right to an education.”

Other American school children agree. Together they have raised more than $60,000 with pennies to build schools in Asia.

As of 2007, Mortenson has established more than 61 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to more than 25,000 children, including 14,000 girls, where few educational opportunities existed before. Mortenson is the director of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, which helps further his causes.

His work has not been without difficulty. In 1996, he survived an eight-day armed kidnapping in the Northwest Frontier Province NWFP tribal areas of Pakistan. In 2003, he escaped a firefight with feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under putrid animal hides in a truck going to a leather-tanning factory. He has overcome two fatwas from enraged Islamic mullahs, endured CIA investigations, and also received hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans after Sept. 11 for helping to educate Muslim children.

While not overseas half the year, Mortenson, 49, lives in Bozeman, Mont., with his wife, Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and their two children.

Check out these Web sites for further information: Central Asia Institute at www.ikat.org and Pennies For Peace at www.pennniesforpeace.org.

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