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Promoting peace through education
- ""As of 2010, Mortenson has established over 141 schools, and another five dozen temporary refugee schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 64,000 children, including 52,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before. In 2009, Mortenson received Pakistan's highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan ("Star of Pakistan") for his humanitarian effort to promote girls education in rural areas for fifteen years. Several bi-partisan U.S. Congressional representatives have nominated Mortenson twice for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2009 and 2010."
- ""Mortenson's new book, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan, was released by Viking on December 1st, 2009 and debuted as #2 on the New York Times bestseller list."
- "Mr. Mortenson shares insights into his life, the experiences that have shaped him, and tells anecdotes about building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan all with powerful images as a backdrop."
- ""From that rash promise, grew a humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His work has not been without difficulty. In 1996, he survived an eight day armed kidnapping by the Taliban in Pakistan' Northwest Frontier Province tribal areas, escaped a 2003 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 fatwehs from enraged Islamic mullahs, endured CIA investigations, and also received threats from fellow Americans after 9/11, for helping Muslim children with education."
- ""Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute (www.ikat.org), Pennies For Peace (www.penniesforpeace.org), and co-author of New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea (www.threecupsoftea.com) which has sold over four million copies, been published in 45 countries, and a New York Times bestseller for over 170 weeks since its release. Three Cups of Tea is mandatory reading for all U.S. military commanders and Special Forces deploying to Afghanistan."
- ""He served in the U.S. Army in Germany (1977-1979), where he received the Army Commendation Medal, and later graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1983 with a degree in Chemistry and Nursing."
- ""President Obama designated $100,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize award to be donated to Mortenson,s effort in Afghanistan in March 2010.""
- ""In July 1992, Mortenson's sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy on the eve of a trip to visit Dysersville, Iowa, where the baseball movie Field of Dreams was filmed. To honor his sister's memory, in 1993, Mortenson climbed Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain. While recovering from the climb in a village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school."
- ""Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military and militia commanders, government officials and tribal chiefs from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls. He is one of few foreigners who has worked for seventeen years (over 80 months in the field) in rural villages where few foreigners go, and considered the "front lines" of the "war on terror.""
- "Promoting peace through education"