A builder of schools in Pak­istan and Afghanistan says you have to lis­ten and coop­er­ate in order to solve the world’s prob­lems. Greg Morten­son founded the Cen­tral Asia Insti­tute, whose mis­sion is to pro­mote peace though education.

Morten­son recently vis­ited the cam­pus of Col­orado State to talk to stu­dents. From the Col­oradan, writer Sara Hansen records some of Mortenson’s remarks.

“You, your­self can never solve the prob­lems of the world,” he told a group of 90 stu­dents Mon­day after­noon in a ball­room at Lory Stu­dent Cen­ter. “It has to be a team effort.”
…

He offered words of encour­age­ment and also told stu­dents that for ser­vice work to be truly suc­cess­ful, the project must con­nect with the peo­ple it is try­ing to serve.

“The local peo­ple have to be con­sulted and that doesn’t hap­pen very often,” he said. “Unless the peo­ple are con­sulted, unless they feel empow­ered, it doesn’t work.”

As an exam­ple, he cited relief efforts in Pak­istan in 2005 after a major earth­quake. Many relief agen­cies from the United States sent cloth­ing. It ended up being burned for fuel.

Morten­son was involved in help­ing set up tent schools to edu­cate the stu­dents. They set up the tents for classes, but no one came. It took a young girl to tell him that the stu­dents needed desks. When the earth­quake hit and the schools col­lapsed, only stu­dents (pri­mar­ily boys) who had desks were able to take shel­ter under­neath and survive.

Once the vol­un­teers scrounged up desks, the chil­dren were eager to learn.

“For them, the desks meant life,” Morten­son said.

Like

Unlike