Greg Mortenson

Her 50th birthday was coming up. And the last thing she wanted was “a bunch of black candles,” or other turning-50 jokes. “(There’s this sense people have that, once you turn 50, it’s kind of downhill from there.”) She was hoping, she says, to “do something that wasn’t all about me.”

So when she read the story in Parade about the mountain climber who was trying to raise money to build schools in a remote region of central Asia – she had lived in Asia once briefly, and studied Japanese – it rang an instant, very powerful bell.

“His name was Greg Mortenson,” says Dr. Judy Davidson today. “He’d been a climber in Nepal, and had gotten sick in the area, and the locals had nursed him back to health. I guess he wanted to give something back…”

All this was in a part of the world – Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, the Mongolian steppes, among the remotest regions in the world – where one in three infants dies before its first birthday and the literacy rate, among males, is less than 6 percent; among women it is essentially zero. It is also a region where radical Islam is preached widely and hatred of the west is endemic; many of the Taliban, and some of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, were indoctrinated in the madrasses here.

Against this background, Greg Mortenson, working practically alone with not much more than his own faith and some borrowed fax machines, and later with the help of local mullahs, set out 10 years ago to fight ignorance – and the hate that grows like weeds in its wake. The result, by the time Judy Davidson read his story, was nothing short of monumental: four women’s vocational centers, 28 primary schools, two school libraries, local scholarships for midwives and eye technicians – more than 8,200 students overall.

So Davidson, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education, decided that, instead of gifts or silly cards, she would ask her friends and celebrants to help Greg Mortenson build another school, one of six he was raising money for at the time: The Olding Community School in Olding, Pakistan, 11 miles from the India-Pakistan border, which will be exclusively for girls.

“I’m a teacher, this is about education. So that seemed very fitting to me. Also, Lowell is a city of immigrants who have benefited from education. To ask people from Lowell to contribute to something like this – it seemed an ideal way to reach out and share…

“I was just really happy to have the chance to do it. The way I look at it, Greg Mortenson is a sort of saintly man.”

The benefit, which was held September 21 at Lowell’s Christ Church United, and attended by Umass Lowell faculty and graduate students as well as friends and family of Judy Davidson, raised $7,038 for the Central Asia Institute – the nonprofit organization founded and run by Greg Mortenson – to enable the building and operation of the Olding School for Girls.

“I’m waiting for the day,” says Judy Davidson, “when I get a letter in some spindly, child’s handwriting from far, far away. ‘Dear Dr. Davidson,’ it’ll say…”

(Anyone wishing to support Greg Mortenson’s effort can send a check to Christ’s Church United in Lowell, with a memo stating that it is for the benefit of the Central Asia Institute. Or you may contact Dr. Davidson directly at ext. 4611, or e-mail at Judith_Davidson@uml.edu)

For over 100 years, Umass Lowell has been making a positive difference in the region, through the education, research, and outreach of the institution. The many people who work on the campus also make a positive difference in the University community, as shown in this series, “Umass Lowell in the Community.”

© 2003 The Shuttle