Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The story of how this remarkable humanitarian campaign began was told in his bestselling 2006 book, Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson’s philosophies about building relationships, empowering communities, and educating girls have struck a powerful chord.
Just as Three Cups of Tea began with a promise—to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan—so too does Mortenson’s new book. In 1999, Kirghiz horsemen from Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor rode into Pakistan and secured a promise from Mortenson to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbad. Mortenson could not build that school before constructing many others, and that is the story he tells in this dramatic new book. Picking up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003, Stones into Schools traces the CAI’s efforts to work in a whole new country, the secluded northeast corner of Afghanistan. Mortenson describes how he and his intrepid manager, Sarfraz Khan, barnstormed around Badakhshan Province and the Wakhan Corridor, moving for weeks without sleep, to establish the first schools there.