Greg Mortenson's "Building Peace"

    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/