The Mount Holyoke News

Issue date: 12/10/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Leila Quinn

Greg Mortenson, author of the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea and the new Stones into Schools, spoke to a packed Chapin Auditorium this past Saturday. President Creighton sat in the front row for the lecture. The event was co-sponsored by the Weissman Center, the President’s Office, Student Programs, the Odyssey and Tantsaqua High School, whose students raised $15,000 to bring Mortenson to western Massachusetts.

Towering over the podium, Mortenson launched into a slideshow about his work, which includes the Central Asia Institute (CAI) and Pennies for Peace. The latter organization is a fundraising effort in lower schools that emphasizes empowerment and the ability of young people to effect change. His personal experiences, he said, informed his work.

“The only way to solve poverty is to be with poverty,” he said. “It can’t be solved in some think tank in Washington, DC.”

Alan Bloomgarden, Director of the Community Based Learning Program (CBL), shares his philosophy of community engagement.
“When he started talking about community involvement and learning, I got a huge smile on my face,” said Bloomgarden. “I agree that inequities are things you can only understand by touching them and learning about them.”

“The focus on community service learning is a revolution in higher education… and the movement is student-driven,” Mortenson continued. “There is a need for role models in community service, and many of these role models are student’s peers.”

Mortenson also lamented the end of the oral tradition in America, and the lack of connection with our elders. This is something that would be very rare in the regions he works in. Due to the high rate of illiteracy, family histories are passed down orally.

“Learning from your elders, being exposed to other communities, and engaging community service projects are things we should all do in life,” said Elizabeth Dumont-McCaffrey ’10.

Mortenson became initially well known for his work with his foundation, the CAI. The organization builds over 200 schools a year in Pakistan, where it was started, and has since expanded to Afghanistan. Reema Naqvi ’12 and Noor El-Edroos ’12 are both from Karachi, Pakistan, and had heard that their country was depicted accurately in Mortenson’s first book, but wanted to hear for themselves.

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