Parade articles about Greg Mortenson
(the original article is in pdf inserted on this page;
the second is text included on this page.)

April 6, 2003





From Parade Magazine website: http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2004/edition_02-29-2004/featured_1
February 29, 2004

Last April, we featured the story of Greg Mortenson, an American fighting terrorism by creating secular schools in Pakistan. Next, he will launch his most critical mission yet—building schools in Afghanistan.
With Your Help, He’s Fighting On
By David Oliver Relin
Publication Date: 02/29/2004
Can one person truly change the world? If his name is Greg Mortenson, and he has the power of thousands of PARADE readers behind him, there’s no mountain that can’t be moved.

Last April 6, we told the story of this modest American hero who argues that, to truly defeat terrorism, the United States must not only use force but also begin to build bridges of peace between Islam and America.

Mortenson, 46, a mountain climber and former Army medic from Bozeman, Mont., has dedicated the last 11 years to building secular schools for the children of northern Pakistan. Working in a war zone at the heart of extremist Islam, he has put himself at great risk, surviving a kidnapping and enduring condemnations heaped on him by hardened Islamic mullahs who resist his efforts to educate girls.

“Ignorance breeds hatred, and hatred leads to terrorism,” Mortenson says. “To fight ignorance, we have to do everything in our power to give all children access to a balanced, nonextremist education.”Last summer, his Central Asia Institute (CAI) completed five schools in Pakistan and began construction on 14 more. (The CAI asks residents in the villages where Mortenson agrees to build schools to take a stake in each project by donating land and labor.) By next summer, the CAI will operate 38 schools, educating more than 12,000 boys and girls. One school—Ganyal Elementary, near the front lines of the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir—has even been carved out of a cliff, to shelter its students from the artillery shells that have killed many in their village.

One of the victims was Amina Batool, 16. “Nothing can bring back my sister from where she rests in paradise,” says Fatima Batool, 12. “But we are grateful to you Americans for building us such a wonderful school.”

He Stirred Our Hearts
After reading Mortenson’s story, more than 14,000 of our readers—from all 50 states and of all ages, faiths and political persuasions—opened their hearts, writing to support the mission of the Central Asia Institute. Many also opened their wallets, donating more than $800,000 to help transform the lives of Pakistan’s poorest children.

Among those who sent letters and e-mails were a U.S. Air Force general, anti-war activists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Christian church groups and children.

Jake Greenberg, a 13-year-old from Pennsylvania, was so inspired by Mortenson’s work that he donated a portion of his bar mitzvah money. “Reading Greg’s story, I realized that, unlike me, children in the Muslim world might not have educational opportunities,” Greenberg says. “It makes no difference that I’m a Jew sending money to help Muslims. We all need to work together to plant the seeds of peace.”

A woman who identified herself as Sufiya e-mailed: “As a Muslim woman, born in America, I am showered with God’s blessings, unlike my sisters around the world who endure oppression. Arab nations should look at your tremendous work and wallow in shame for never helping their own people. With sincere respect and admiration, I thank you.

”Patsy Collins, an 84-year-old philanthropist from Seattle, donated $120,000 just days before she died of lung cancer. She also presented Mortenson with books to bring to his female students. In one Dr. Seuss book, she inscribed: “This is the last thing I will ever write. My dear little girls, study hard, learn to read and write, and be forever free.”

Next month, Mortenson will travel to Washington, D.C., where he will be named the 2003 winner of the prestigious Al Neuharth Free Spirit of the Year Award, given by the Freedom Forum. The winner for 2002 was the Burmese Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The annual award goes to “the person in the news who has stirred our hearts by demonstrating the human capacity to dare, dream and do.”

A New Mission In Afghanistan
Mortenson is about to embark on his biggest challenge in a decade—building schools for the girls of Afghanistan. He has moved his office out of the basement of his home in Bozeman and doubled his staff of two.

“Afghans are still grateful to America for banishing the Taliban,” he says, “but we’re in danger of losing that goodwill. We need to keep the promises we made to the people who need us most—the girls who were confined to their homes during the time of the Taliban, dreaming of the day they could go to school.”

This spring, Mortenson plans to break ground on two all-girls high schools in rural northern Afghanistan—far from urban centers like Kabul, where most of what little foreign aid entering the country is spent. Together, these schools will offer more than 5000 Afghan girls something that has been in short supply during the decades of war their nation has endured: hope.

“The decisions we make as a nation now will affect relations between Islam and the West for generations,” Mortenson argues.

“People ask me how I can leave my wife and two small children for months at a time and risk my life to do my work,” he says. “It’s because, when I look into my kids’ eyes, I know that I owe it to them to make the world they’ll inherit a better, more peaceful place.”