East Carolinian

Issue date: 11/11/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: staff photo

An ECU sociology of education course has been given the opportunity to raise awareness and lend a hand to a charitable foundation overseas.

The Central Asia Institute foundation was launched by Greg Mortenson, who set out to climb Pakistan's K2 Mountain in 1993.

By chance, Mortenson arrived in the village of Korphe alongside the mountain and was amazed at the lack of schooling and educational institutions for the children in the region. As such, Mortenson promised to return and establish such schools, focusing especially on the females in the provinces. Since then, he has built 55 schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Three Cups of Tea" refers to the book that Mortenson wrote in his mission to "promote peace one school at a time."

The special topics in the sociology of education course, taught by Caroline Schacht, chose the Central Asia Institute foundation as a philanthropy for their class to focus on and decided amongst themselves a method of raising funds for the Institute.

"One of the goals of the sociology of education course is to increase awareness of the state of education in countries around the world," said Schacht. "It is my hope that the story is powerful enough to motivate [the class] to want to contribute the efforts of Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute to achieve universal literacy and education for all children."

Students of the class have begun holding fundraising events in hopes of garnering attention to their cause and monetary funds for the charity as a whole, along with reaching out to organizations on campus and around the community to collect support.

"I am humbled at his [Mortenson's] perseverance and dedication to provide the powerful gift of education to those less fortunate," said Twana Bradley, a student in the SOCI 4000 class.

Upon the completion of the course, students will evaluate their efforts and the efforts of their classmates in the project. While their endeavor will end in December, the Central Asia Institute will continue to collect donations indefinitely.

"I feel that education really gives the children choices," said Abey Dessie, who is also enrolled in the class. "In some of the regions where they grow up, they may have only the Taliban or farming. Through building schools and offering them an education, their options increase."

For more information regarding the project, visit the Central Asia Institute's Web site at ikat.org.

For information regarding the class project, students have set up a Web site describing their efforts in full at threecupsofteaproject.org.

This writer can be contacted at features@theeastcarolinian.com.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools