Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson went to Pakistan to climb K2, the ‘Savage Mountain’ but his more arduous journey began when he saw Pakistani village children scrawling their alphabets in the dirt with a twig.

That was in 1993. Determined to build a school in the village, Mortenson went back ato the United States and established the non-profit Central Asia Institute, an organization devoted to furthering community-based education for girls and conservation for communities in the Karakoram area. Currently, the institute has opened 28 schools which have a total of 8200 students.

Of these, 3400 are girls. “They say that when you educate a boy, you educate an individual,” said Mortenson. “When you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

Mortenson sees it with his won eyes when he is working in the villages. “My greatest joy is to see a young teaching her mother what she learned in school,” Mortenson said. “It makes me really excited.” The winner of the American Alpine Club’s prestigious David Brower conservation award, Mortenson will speak on Friday (Nov. 1) at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and show slides, as well as take part in a panel on Saturday (Nov. 2). Mortenson was in Banff last year as well, when the Central Asia Institute had a booth at the festival as part of their fundraising efforts.

This year, Mortenson will be looking back over nine years of the struggling to bring education to the youth of Pakistan and Afghanistan. “I feel more committed than ever to what we’re doing,” Mortenson said. “With 9/11 past us, I feel more that ever that long term solutions lie in peaceful means.”

Twenty thousand foreigners have visited the Karakoram area, but not one has reached out to the people, Mortenson said. They climb the mountains, they have a good time and then they go home. Nearly a decade after his first school opened , Mortenson proudly holds up an example of the fruits of his labour—a photo of Jahan, an alumnus from on the of Mortenson’s schools. She is now learning midwifery, which Mortenson predicts will reduce the infant mortality rate in her village, a place without health services of any kind.

Mortenson keeps busy speaking at universities, sporting goods stores, schools, businesswomen associations as well as the American Association of University Women in his efforts to raise money for the schools. “My biggest challenges are here, not there,” said Mortenson, adding that fundraising and administration take up much of his time while he is in North America.

He was in northern Pakistan visiting CAI projects with the attack on the World Trade Center took place. The people there were shocked and concerned, he said.

“Little old ladies brought me eggs to give the widows (in America),” said Mortenson. “People here reached out to me to offer condolences.” Ironically, when Mortenson returned home to Montana, he found hate mail from furious Americans awaiting him. They called him a traitor.

Mortenson argues that education will strike at the source of terrorism. Schools in the poverty-stricken region, he says, would greatly inhibit the Taliban from recruiting poor, uneducated youth. His goal, he says, is to reach communities that are normally left alone due to their remoteness. The process is slow and Mortenson describes it using the Japanese word, kaizan, which stands for continuous, incremental progress that results in significant change.

Mortenson says he is looking forward to the Banff Festival. “It’s always good to meet mountain people,” he says. Banff especially, he adds, has a reputation for conservation, and the festival is a real meeting of diverse minds. “I’m looking forward to interacting with the diverse groups of people who gather at Banff once a year.”

Copyright (c) 2002 Banff Crag and Canyon