Oprah’s Angel Network

In a region known more for Kalashnikov rifles than college degrees, Greg Mortenson’s mission to educate girls and build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan has proven that the pen is indeed mightier than the bullet.

Greg surrounded by students near the Satara Sarhad School in the Wakhan Corridor at the base of the Pamir Mountains in northern Afghanistan.

Photo courtesy of Central Asia Institute

Greg’s journey, popularized by his 2006 best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea”, started in 1993 with an attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2 mountain to honor his sister Christa, who had died from epilepsy.

K2 has brought many a man to his knees, and Greg, who is an experienced climber with a military background, was no exception. After helping rescue another climber, he lost contact with his guide and wandered down the mountain range, near death, into the village of Korphe, which is located in the northeast tip of Pakistan between China and India.

There, in an area so impoverished that children were solving math problems with sticks in the dirt, the community nursed Greg back to health. Greg vowed to return to Korphe and build those children a proper school.

Pillar of Progress

Some 78 schools later, Greg’s nonprofit organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), is a pillar of progress in the region, and proof that ordinary people can make meaningful change to bring about peace.

“I feel if you promote peace that’s based on hope,” said Greg in an email interview, “that the real enemy is ignorance on all sides of the world, because it’s based on hatred. To overcome ignorance, we must have courage and compassion, and look beyond our own barriers and bias to know that we are all part of a global society.”

Greg has often said that once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and search for work. But the girls stay home and become leaders in the community, passing on what they’ve learned, in what becomes a virtuous cycle.

“You can do everything,” said Greg, “hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated society won’t change.”

CAI completed the Korphe school in 1996. The risks taken to build that first school are starting to pay off, as several of the girls there have gone on to college. Jahan Twaha, who is the granddaughter of Haji Ali (one of the central figures in “Three Cups of Tea”), studied public policy and has her eyes on becoming a senator. Shakeela Khan, from the CAI girls’ school in the nearby Hushe Valley, will become the first homegrown, village-educated doctor in the region.

The rugged terrains of northern Afghanistan and Pakistan can make building schools there difficult. Here, workers bring wooden beams to a school site.

Photo courtesy of Central Asia Institute

To help girls pursue higher education, CAI now provides scholarships to girls in the region. Read more about CAI scholarship students

These successes energize CAI’s tiny staff as they build schools where few people would dare go, unfazed by the threat of landslides, leftover landmines and the Taliban.

Humble Champion of Education

Greg, who was raised near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania by his parents who founded that country’s first teaching hospital, is quick to credit others for his success. And, in a way, he is right. When building a new school, Greg first receives an invitation from the local community, which engages in two to four years of planning.

The process pulls in village elders, tribal chiefs and military commanders—all people who might normally hesitate to work with a Westerner. But as Greg emphasizes, the school is theirs and they must be invested in the process. The community provides the land, wood resources and manual labor, while CAI provides skilled labor, additional materials and teacher training. Greg takes extra steps to ingratiate himself to the elders in the village, who, in a tradition-laden culture, are vital to garnering support and helping ensure the safety of the teachers and building.

“There’s a millennium old tribal tradition that the elders are in charge,” said Greg, “and they are to be respected as the decision makers and arbitrators.”

Greg also strategically locates the schools, building relationships in one village which naturally leads to requests for another school to be built in the next.

Perhaps more than any other reason for Greg’s success is his ability to engender trust. Maybe it is because of his sincere eyes or earnest demeanor—whatever the reason, he emits a universal vibe that reminds all of us that humanity in the larger sense knows nothing of ethnicity, religion or tribe.

And so, often after that third cup of tea, the man they affectionately refer to as Dr. Greg (although technically he was trained as a nurse), becomes a welcome figure in yet another remote community, and yet another young girl is given what was once the unthinkable opportunity of getting an education.