
Greg Mortenson knows poverty. He knows that loosening its grip on developing nations can turn a depressed society into a productive one, and can offer hope for a brighter world in places where the future has long appeared bleak. He also knows that tackling this problem requires an intimate approach.
Mortenson, humanitarian and bestselling author of “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones Into Schools” earned several standing ovations during his speech at Loyola Marymount University on Tuesday. “In order to fight poverty, we have to touch poverty. We have to taste poverty. We have to smell poverty. We have to be with poverty,” he said. “We can never solve poverty from a think tank in Washington, D.C.”
He described the challenges he faced when first establishing the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, which has built dozens of schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and lauded the LMU student body for the large number of students who participate in service projects.
Roughly 80 percent of LMU seniors are involved in service projects, which Mortenson said is a very high number. “I speak at a lot of colleges and universities, and often you see 50 to 60 percent,” he said.
For Mortenson, whose books are required reading for senior U.S. military commanders, the key to creating peace is through education and understanding between cultures. The title of his first book, “Three Cups of Tea,” comes from a proverb that states, “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family.” It is that level of understanding that builds the trust and relationships needed to help people reach a situation where they can help themselves, Mortenson said.
“We talk a lot about helping people, but what we really need to do is empower people,” he said. “There is a big difference between helping and empowering.”
Also Tuesday, Mortenson was awarded by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts the 2010 Doshi Family Bridgebuilder Award, which is given annually by Navin and Pratima Doshi, who also endowed LMU’s Professorship in Indic and Comparative Theology.
Mortenson’s work to bring education to impoverished villages in Central Asia has made him “the very essence of a bridgebuilder,” Navin Doshi said at the event. “He has built bridges not only across the peaks but between cultures as well.”