Greg Mortenson: Promoting Peace through Education

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Greg Mortenson is a truly influential person. He has built over 120 schools in central Asia. Mortenson believes that the real long term answer to terrorism “lies in education rather than fighting” (402). He has won multiple Pakistani humanitarian awards and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize two years in a row (Mortenson and Relin, 127). Mortenson built his first school in 1994 in a Pakistani village called Korphe. Korphe is situated at the base of K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Mortenson stumbled upon this tiny village after a failed attempt to climb the peak in honor of his late sister Christa. (Mortenson and Relin, 136). Since building the school in Korphe, Mortenson has built multiple schools around Pakistan and Afghanistan. His focus is on educating girls about the world around them. By building schools in third world countries, Greg Mortenson is impeding terrorism.

In an impecunious third world country, a penny can procure a pencil. The penny is 1% of a U.S. dollar. This parallels the 1% Gross Domestic Profit goal set by the United Nations. This goal enlists the help of developed countries to give 1% of their gross domestic profit to an underdeveloped third world country. By giving 1% of a dollar to an impoverished country, one can buy a student a pencil; therefore allowing them to become literate. For a single dollar, one can promote literacy for an entire village. If an adolescent or young adult becomes literate, he or she can help the whole family by reading newspapers and keeping up with current events (Mortenson and Relin 283). In Pakistani bazaars, food comes wrapped in newspaper. If a family has even one literate member, that person can read about the daily news when the food is unwrapped (Morten...

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...ing per capita income in third world nations by helping more women engage in the workforce. Mortenson is enlightening people to stand up to domestic and general violence, consequently decreasing the amount of government corruption. Greg Mortenson has made an amazing effort to create a safer world. The world would be better if more people and their governments followed his example.

Works Cited

Mortenson, Greg, and David Oliver Relin. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote

Peace -- One School at a Time. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.

Mortenson, Greg. Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan

and Pakistan. Waterville, Me.: Thorndike, 2009. Print.

Nojumi, Neamatollah, Dyan E. Mazurana, and Elizabeth Stites. After the Taliban: Life and

Security in Rural Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Print.

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