Greg Mortenson, the humanitarian author of a bestselling memoir about his successful campaign to build schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, was thrilled by the prospect of a first-time visit to Toronto this week – and not only because a benefactor provided him with free tickets to Tuesday night's Leafs game.
"I love librarians," says Mortenson, who has an event Wednesday night at the Toronto Reference Library to promote his new book, Stones into Schools, a sequel to the phenomenally popular Three Cups of Tea.
"Librarians and teachers are my heroes. And Toronto has the biggest library system in the world. So I'm really excited."
Mortenson's debt to librarians dates back to 1993 when he set out to fulfill his promise to build a school in the small Pakistani village of Korphe. The former mountaineer had made the commitment while being given refuge in Korphe after a failed attempt to scale K2. But he didn't have a clue where to begin when he returned home to Montana.
"I had no idea how to fundraise," he says. "I went to the local library and told them I needed to raise $12,000 to build a school in Pakistan. They helped me look up the names of 580 celebrities and movie stars. I hand-typed those letters. I only got one cheque back, but it was basically the librarians who helped me get started."
That one cheque was a $100 donation from Tom Brokaw, the now retired NBC TV news anchor. Since that modest start, Mortenson's Central Asian Institute has built 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing education for 58,000 students, including 44,000 girls. The organization has also built another 60 temporary schools for 25,000 students in refugee camps.
Mortenson also became an author and reluctant celebrity after the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, a richly anecdotal account of his conversion from adventurer into humanitarian that details the construction of that first Pakistan school. The book, published in nearly 40 countries, has sold more than three million copies. Stones into Schools picks up the story, focusing mainly on the building of a school in Afghanistan's remote Wakhan Corridor.
"The overall mission is to promote girls' education in areas where there is no education," he says. "And those areas tend to be areas of extreme isolation, areas of conflict or war, and areas of religious extremism."
Mortenson, who repeatedly insists that the problems facing Afghanistan do not have a military solution, points to education as a sign that progress is being made in the country. In 2000, school enrolment in the country was 800,000 students, the vast majority of them boys. Today, 8.5 million students, including 2.5 million girls, attend school.
"When women become educated, they are much less likely to encourage their sons to get involved in terrorism or violence. The Taliban's primary recruiting grounds are among the impoverished and illiterate segments of society because the majority of educated women will discourage their sons from getting involved with violence and terrorism."