BEING WHO WE WANT OUR CHILDREN TO BECOME

  Recently AWTTT heard from Kalia Mussetter who , as many individuals do, made suggestions for a portrait subject, Greg Mortensen, of whom I have written regarding his work written about in the text, Three Cups of Tea.Kalia offers a very detailed and helpful summary of the work and its implications that would be extremely worthwhile as a general study or quick overview in class. Thanks to Kalia for sending this our way!!!I have also included here a youtube link to the interview done with truth teller Bill Moyers on PBS this week.

I’m an artist and community service coordinator. My passion is bringing resources and relationships to the most vulnerable people in our community, including individuals and families struggling in homelessness; adults living with serious mental illness ordual diagnosis; kids living in poverty, family crisis, abuse, or group homes; gang-affiliated teens, and families with one or more incarcerated member. I also like to support the front-line workers who serve our most vulnerable neighbors every single day: the extraordinary, usually unrecognized heroes who are saving the world, one relationship at a time, in non-profits, schools, and institutions all over this country.When people with resources and heart for service come together with people who are currently in need of support, both parties are deeply transformed. Real service work is always a collaboration between two equals towards a goal of healing and empowerment. This is true no matter how each person looks when pressed up against society’s standard yardstick of worth and value.My joy is bringing art-making of all kinds, including quilting, painting, muraling, mosaic glass work, and ceramics, to vulnerable kids. So many of us find ways to express our unspeakable stories, and also our worth and dignity, in the process of making and sharing art. My dream is to finish my graduate work in Expressive Arts Therapy, and also to write more. My fun is playing outside, making art, and collaborating with the vulnerable and with other trusted servants involved in the lives of the vulnerable.And here’s her incredible summary of what Greg Mortenson wants us to know:Two weeks ago, I had the great joy of hearing Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea, and, most recently, Stones into Schools, about his experience of building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He generously provided a small, free teacher/student talk, as well as his book-signing event in Santa Rosa, both of which I was lucky enough to attend. As many of you know, Greg’s work focuses on building schools for girls, which is radical in this region. In 17 years, his schools have educated 58,000 children, 44,000 of whom are girls.Greg’s work gives me hope for the world. Last year, General Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (that is, the head of the entire U.S. military) read Three Cups of Tea, and was literally transformed by it. (His wife had given it to him!) Three Cups is now required reading for all military leadership and deployed military personnel in Afghanistan.    !  I feel so inspired by Greg and his work that I decided to pass on some of my notes. I hope you enjoy, and pass on the scoop, of this incredible person’s work in our world. Happy Holidays—Kalia1.  “Without education, nothing will change in a country like Afghanistan”  —Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and David Petraus, Director of Central Command in Afghanistan (their doctrine has been profoundly influenced by Greg’s work in the region)(….and I thought, “in a country like America”: we need Highlander Institutes, a la Miles Horton, all over the U.S., to teach our children and young adults how to participate in our own communities and in our democratic process for their own best good)2.  “There is no military solution in Afghanistan. What we need are three operating principles in all we do there:             We need to listen more to people             We must have respect for people             We must build relationships with people”     —Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and David Petraus, Director of Central Command in Afghanistan, at the 2009 American Legion Convention3.  The cost to eradicate child illiteracy globally is $6 billion. Total. It would take us 15 years. That is $3 to $5 per child per month, for the 150 million illiterate children world-wide who do not currently have access to education.4.  Greg’s work is animated by this African proverb he learned as a kid in Africa:    ”If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community.”5.  When it is darkest, you can see the stars  —Persian Proverb6.  The only way we can solve poverty is to:               touch poverty               taste poverty               smell poverty               hear povertyWe cannot bring change to those suffering in poverty from a distance.(In my own work,  I see that so often service efforts are characterized by the powerful talking to the powerful about the powerless. Greg’s service paradigm is the opposite of this, with stunning results: 138 schools, all including girls, built in an area in which this is ostensibly impossible. He has done it by focusing on building close relationships with those he serves. And because of this, of course they serve him as well. Greg’s being, life and family have been transformed by these relationships and the work he and his service partners do together.)7.  Greg funds his service organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), almost entirely by Pennies for Peace, a program in which American school children save and donate their loose change, especially pennies, to CAI for the building of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is all facilitated by children, with the help of a small team of grown-ups at CAI Center in Montana. CAI uses no other marketing strategy or fund-raising apparatus beyond this and Greg’s book tours.8.  Pennies for Peace was started by an 11 year old child in Montana, who, after hearing Greg’s first public talk in 1996, told Greg he would fund his work by giving all his piggy bank money to Greg.9.  There are enough pennies in the United Stated to double our entire education budget for our own children each year.10.  Grade school aged children Greg has surveyed recently in the U.S. revealed that 10% of them talk and listen at least once a week with an elder in their own family of community. In Central Asia, the same age group similarly surveyed revealed that 90% of children talk and listen with trusted elders in their family or community each week.11.  So, in all of Greg’s schools, elders come in and talk with the children twice a week, as a matter of standard practice12.  When Greg first published Three Cups of Tea, Penguin Putnam insisted, against Greg’s strong objection, that its sub-title be “one man’s fight against terrorism”. The first run did not do well. Greg negotiated with them to change the sub-title to “One man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time”. The book immediately jumped onto the NY Times best seller list, where it has remained for over 140 months.13.  “Fighting terrorism is based on fear. Building peace is based on hope”, says Greg.14.  According to Islamic law, when a man wants to go on Jihad, he must first ask his mother and gain her permission. Greg and his CAI team in-country have found, repeatedly, that mothers who have been educated to only the 5th grade say no.15.  Ink is mightier than the blood of a martyr.   —Islamic Proverb16.  Nine years ago, 8000 kids in Afghanistan were in school. In the year 2008, 800,000 kids were in school in Afghanistan. Of the half- million people Greg has asked on his tours in the last year, only 52 knew this. U.S. military leadership learned this statistic from Greg in 2008. When he told them, they immediately began to congratulate themselves and U.S. military efforts. Greg responded, “How can you take credit for something you did not know about until today?”17. ”I am convinced that the long term solution to terrorism is education.”  —Lieutenant Colonel. Christopher Kolanda, Commander of Operation Saber, the most dangerous Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan, based on both his military, and Greg’s humanitarian, experience in the region. Commander Kolanda works closely with many regional tribal elders in his daily fight against terrorist insurgents in the area. He and Greg became friends after Kolanda read Three Cups of Tea.18. When kids in the U.S. hear Greg talk about his work each year, when he travels around to hundreds of schools and communities, they are often inspired to create service projects of their own. Three examples are:A.  High school Junior Garrett in Dannville, CA (where Greg was before he came to us in Santa Rosa on the 12th), who started Fund a   Field, which builds soccer fields for kids in Rwanda and other parts of AfricaB.  10 year old Zack, in South Florida, who after hearing Greg speak in his town three years ago, began to notice homeless kids in his own town. he started the Little Red Wagon Foundation, to raise money and awareness of homelessness in the U.S. Last year he walked from his home in Florida to Washington DC. He raised $68,000 along the way. This year he will walk from Florida to LA. His goal is to raise a million dollars for homeless kids in the US.C.  After the horrific 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan last year, which killed, among others, many thousands of children, Greg’s 12 year old daughter Amira realized that the children remaining in villages all over the affected areas had nothing at all to play with—and desperately needed play. At breakfast one morning, she told her dad “you’d better send those kids some jump ropes!”—and then proceeded, herself, to gather 12,000 jump ropes. They were shipped within a month of her insight, and indeed shifted the level of despair in whole communities, whose adults were also affected by the kid’s laughter and play in the midst of such profound loss.19.  Greg showed us a photograph of high-ranking Taliban-supporting elders, who had reached out to him and CAIabout building a high school to include girls in their own province. In the photo, the men have laid down their machine guns to swing on another nearby CAI school’s swing sets. Here is the anecdote Greg told us about this photo:After they’d played for nearly an hour, they gave permission to build the new school. “But it must have a play ground!” they said. Followed by, “We all grew up in war; we fought the Soviets, we lived in refugee camps, when we were children. We were never able to attend school, nor did we have any childhood to speak of. We want something different for our children and grand children.” The audience at the book signing gasped as the photo came on the screen, as Greg told us this anecdote. The lives of such men, who are now wreaking such havoc, have been utterly shaped by personal tragedy and loss. Greg’s work has taken them from pure “other” back into humanness, to reachability.His relentless, respectful, collaborative, humane bridge-building efforts on behalf of children’s basic right to education in this ultra-volatile region have begun to bear the fruits of stable relationships and peace, even among traditional combatants. A miracle with vast implications for the rest of the world. Israel/Palestine, anyone?20.  CAI has found consistently that when girls learn to read and write, they immediately teach their mothers. When boys become literate, they often leave their villages to go find work, and income, to send home to their families. When girls become literate, they remain in their villages and transform them. Hygiene, nutrition, infant mortality rates, family size, and traditional village culture all improve drastically and measurably when girls receive education even to only a 5th grade level. Kalia Kalia MussetterLiving BridgesBringing people together for transformative community service