One day in 1993, a lost mountain climber, starving and disoriented, stumbled from the slopes of the treacherous peak known as K2 into an isolated Pakistani village. The impoverished villagers sheltered and fed him until he was well enough to move on. When he learned they had no school for their children, he vowed to return and build them one. In the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, war and poverty have limited education for all, while custom and prejudice have denied education to women altogether. With no other means to escape a life of crushing poverty, many young people become recruits for terrorist movements. Unfazed by the immensity of the problem, Greg Mortenson founded the Central Asia Institute to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in this remote and volatile region. In the course of his work, he has survived religious edicts by fundamentalist mullahs, the crossfire of rival warlords and kidnapping by the Taliban. He has related the story of his adventurous life and his humanitarian vision in the gripping memoir Three Cups of Tea. As of 2009, he has founded 130 schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, providing educational opportunities to over 50,000 children, more than half of them girls who might otherwise have received no education at all.
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