Saturday, January 29, 2011

Greg Mortenson's "Building Peace"

Greg Mortenson with Khanday schoolchildren.  Pakistan.    The "Building Peace" video is about the people in central Asia who are living in poverty with very few educated people and no clean drinking water.  That all changed when a man named Greg Mortenson was attempting to climb K2, the world’s tallest mountain, to honor his sister who died of epilepsy in 1992.  The attempt was just that, an attempt.  Afterwards, he was taken in by the Balti people of the Korphe village and was nursed back to health in northern Pakistan.  While on his three-year stay, he met a group of kids scribbling in the dirt and promised them that he come back to help build a school for the local children, especially girls.  When he returned to northern Pakistan, he started to bring his promise to reality.  He is now co-founder of the Central Asia Institute in which educated natives volunteer to teach children, mainly females of all ages, so that they could have a basic education of learning to read, write, and do mathematics.  The main focus of CAI is to give females an education so they could get a job to help their families.  It not only helped their families by them having a job, but it also would help stimulate the economy as well.  Even though it is aimed at females, boys can also get an education.       

    Not only did Mr. Mortenson give the local children a school, but he also gave the village clean water to drink by building a water system.     

    This shows that we should not take anything for granted and to appreciate what we already have.  Mr. Mortenson spent a lot of his time in Pakistan and Afghanistan trying to promote education, especially for females of all ages.  According to him, one of the causes of terrorism is fear.  But if we follow his example, there will be fewer misunderstandings and less fear in the world.  Less fear means less of a chance of a terrorist attack on any country.   


For more info about the CAI, feel free to visit https://www.ikat.org/  
    

Thinking Peace

What do some of us, including me, think about when it comes to the word "peace"?

    I do not know about you, but I think of plenty of things when I hear the word "peace", but the first three that come to mind are: peace of mind, peace on Earth, and peace between people.  Peace of mind is when our brain is at a single, or multiple, points in our lives where we are not stressing out over one or more things.  Having peace of mind is having a relaxed mind.  No one wants to feel stressed out, but we experience it more than once in our lifetime.  To feel relaxed, we could do something that we enjoy doing on our spare time. 

   Peace can also mean peace on Earth.  This is when every country is getting along with the rest of the world.  This would mean that there would not be any wars to fight and no killing between two or more nations, or countries.  No war also means that there will not be any fatalities or casualties on either side.  I think of it like 1960's America where the teenagers were relaxed, they all got along with one another, and did not worry about anything dealing with the matter of war.

   Peace can also be on a smaller scale than just between nations, but between two or more people.  When people get along with each other and not fight, the world really is a better place to live.  In this peaceful world, if someone does not like someone else is doing or how they are acting, then they could just talk about the issue and try to come to an agreement.  They could do this instead of resorting to punching each other in the face and starting a fight.   This method of resolving issues could also hold true to peace on Earth.