Seizing the future
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Dawn, Pakistan
By Nafisa Rizvi
Thursday, 11 Jun, 2009
To date this mountain climber, with no personal resource other than his dogged determination and gritty persistence, has built more than 70 schools, mainly for girls across the North-West Frontier Province and northern Punjab in places such as Skardu, Shegar, Hushe, Hunza, Braidu and the Neelam Valley. Along his journey Mortenson encountered fatwas and death threats and even a kidnapping from which he narrowly escaped.
To many in Pakistan it is just another read, a do-good story of heroism and high achievement. What it should have done was evoke a questioning angst tearing at the heart of the ennui-ridden, blasé members of civil society. The question that should have cropped up is this: if an American can choose to give up three square meals, a warm bed, and long stretches of time with his wife and children to traipse many miles across a hostile country with an unwelcome terrain and share the food and housing of people living in the most meagre conditions of bare survival, all for the sake of setting up a school that will benefit our girls and our future, why are we lounging around impotently watching our children’s future being seized from us?
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By Nafisa Rizvi
Thursday, 11 Jun, 2009
To date this mountain climber, with no personal resource other than his dogged determination and gritty persistence, has built more than 70 schools, mainly for girls across the North-West Frontier Province and northern Punjab in places such as Skardu, Shegar, Hushe, Hunza, Braidu and the Neelam Valley. Along his journey Mortenson encountered fatwas and death threats and even a kidnapping from which he narrowly escaped.
To many in Pakistan it is just another read, a do-good story of heroism and high achievement. What it should have done was evoke a questioning angst tearing at the heart of the ennui-ridden, blasé members of civil society. The question that should have cropped up is this: if an American can choose to give up three square meals, a warm bed, and long stretches of time with his wife and children to traipse many miles across a hostile country with an unwelcome terrain and share the food and housing of people living in the most meagre conditions of bare survival, all for the sake of setting up a school that will benefit our girls and our future, why are we lounging around impotently watching our children’s future being seized from us?
Read More
Labels: Education, Philanthropy
posted @ 9:26 AM,
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