Three Cups of Tea

Ironically, as I’m writing this, I’m on my third cup of tea for the day. šŸ™‚

As stated last week, I wanted to talk more about Greg Mortenson, and his books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. They describe his life as he works to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan to increase girls’ education. My presentation this week in class focused on the general benefits of girls’ education in the Middle East, as well as the organization Greg founded, called the Central Asia Institute. Ā Each community is required to commit to donating the land and labor, as well as promising to increase female enrollment until boys and girls have an equal share in the school. After this agreement, the CAI uses donor funds to bring the materials into the rural location, and builds a school.

One of the main takeaways from the books is how much Greg didn’t know what he was doing, starting this endeavor alone, but decided to help anyway. He struggles a lot, especially in the first book, when he builds the first school. For example, after he raises enough money in the States to build his first school, he returns to the summit of K2 and is told they can’t yet- they need to build a bridge first.

So even though the processes of NGO’s are becoming more professional, the passion and persistence of the employees is still the most important attribute. (It should be noted that even thought Greg struggled in the past, the CAI works hard to ensure only 15% of donor funds goes to overhead, and the rest goes to actually building schools).

Before reading these books, girls’ education was one of those causes I’d always felt passionate for, but now I feel even more that way. I’m not saying that educating boys isn’t Ā important as well- I’m just saying girls deserve to be educated too!

Following is a great video used to describe how much educating a girl can help a community- from the GirlEffect.org.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw]