by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, 2006
Greg was rescued by villagers in remote mountainous area of Pakistan (Korphe) after he tried to climb K2. He promised them he’d build them a school. Was a nurse, lived in storage unit in California. Wrote 580 letters. Only Tom Brokaw gave him $100. An article in a mountaineering magazine attracted Jean Hoerni to his cause, wealthy inventor of semi-conductor technology. He gave him $12,000 for first school. Greg got all the supplies to Korphe and they asked him for a bridge. So Jean gave him money for the bridge. Ten to 15 years later, he had built many schools and was starting to build in Afghanistan. The Saudi’s would build madrassas and train up the boys to be jihadists. Greg’s schools don’t teach hate.
www.penniesforpeace.org is one way to help – school children can help that way.
Later on, Greg Mortenson was investigated and ordered to repay one million dollars to the Central Asia Institute, the non-profit that Jean Hoerni created to fund the building of the schools. It was found that much of the book, Three Cups of Tea, was fabricated, and that Greg Mortenson was using a lot of the money donated to Central Asia Institute for his personal expenses. As I write this in June 2020, the penniesforpeace website still exists and Central Asia Institute is still a charity organization dedicated to educating children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.