Emma Willard in the News

Peace Through Education

April 6, 2009

reg Mortenson, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of the best selling "Three Cups of Tea", will speak Monday, April 13 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at RPI’s Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy. 

Mortenson was invited to speak by the Emma Willard School in Troy. There is a common mission that unites them. Emma Willard School, founded in 1814, was the first school in this country to offer girls an education equal to boys.  

Since 1993 Mortenson has been devoting his time to building schools, primarily for girls, in mountain villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He believes we can achieve peace through education. On a mountain climbing trip in Central Asia, Mortenson was lost and stranded, found his way to a remote village where the villagers cared for him and nursed him back to health.  When he asked the village elders what he could do to repay them, they asked him to help educate their children. This has been his life’s work ever since.

Trudy Hall, Head of School at Emma Willard, said, “Given the distinctive and lengthy tradition of teaching excellence and the extraordinary commitment to girls’ education, Emma Willard School must be a partner in the effort to educate the world’s girls.”

Mortenson is the co-founder of the Central Asia Institute, the foundation which works to establish new schools. As of 2008, over 78 schools have been established, providing education to 28,000 students, 65% of whom are girls. This is very high for a culture in which girls and women traditionally are not educated or taught to read.