The Alaska World Affairs Council Presents

Dr. Jerene Mortenson

       

"Three Cups of Tea: a Mother's Perspective "

Friday, 12nd March 2010 – Hilton Hotel
Doors open at 11:30 p.m. - Program begins at 12:00 p.m.
For Reservations
RSVP by Wednesday, 10th March to the Alaska World Affairs Council
by telephone 276-8038 or by email to AlaskaWorldAffairs.org .
Lunch Program $25 for Members - $30 for Non-Members - $3 for Students - $11 for Coffee Only

GET A FREE COPY!
The first 150 people at the event will receive
a free copy of Greg Mortenson’s latest book
Stones into Schools:
Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Jerene Mortenson is the mother of Greg Mortenson author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. Through Greg’s non-profit, the Central Asia Institute and the Pennies into Schools program they have succeeded in building over 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Jerene received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She has been an elementary and secondary school teacher in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Tanzania.
When Greg was three months old, his parents packed him up in Minnesota and took him around the world, to the East African country of Tanzania, where they would spend the next 14 years as Lutheran missionaries. Growing up in the shadow of Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro, Greg learned from his missionary parents how to help people in need: Build schools and hospitals for them. He also learned to appreciate those who were different from himself. From 1958 to 1973, Greg watched as his father, Dempsey Mortenson, start and become the development director of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, a 640-bed facility and the nation’s first teaching hospital. His mother, Dr. Jerene Mortenson, founded the International School Moshi there in 1972. In 1973, the family returned to Minnesota with Greg and his sister Christa, so that Greg could attend high school.
Back in the Midwest, Jerene was principal at Westside Elementary School in River Fall, Wisconsin, from 1986 until 1998. She left to become an administrator at Shawano Indian Reservation in Shawano.
As told in Three Cups of Tea, when Greg returned from his attempted climb of K2 in 1993 he resolved to build a school for the village which had housed him during his recovery. In an early effort to raise money he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen, and other prominent Americans. His only reply was a $100 check from NBC’s Tom Brokaw. Selling everything he owned, he still only raised $2,400.
Jerene suggested that Greg come talk to her school and that’s when the Pennies for Peace service-learning program began. After hearing Greg’s story, students, through their own initiative, raised 62,340 pennies to help Greg build his first school in Pakistan. As Greg says “the kids got it right away. When they saw the pictures, they couldn’t believe that there was a place where children sat outside in cold weather and tried to hold classes without teachers. They decided to do something about it.”
From that seminal experience Greg realized that he had two missions: one, to help children in Pakistan and Afghanistan have access to education where it never existed before; and two, to broaden and enrich education where it existed in the developed world so that students have the opportunity to become more educated global citizens. Since those early days Pennies for Peace has grown into a program that encompass thousands of schools and tens-of-thousands of students around the world.