Institute of Central Asia

ICA was established as a non-profit organization in 1996 ^[3] . Greg Mortenson, co-founder of ICA, began work in Pakistan in 1993. The organization was created at the expense of co-founder, pioneer of microchips in the Silicon Valley engineer and physicist, Jean Ernie in 1996 ^[4] . Mortenson's first visit to Pakistan took place during his ascent to K2, the second largest peak in the world. During this expedition, Mortenson met people from the Baltics who were inspired by his humanitarian efforts ^[5] .

For three years, from 1993-1996, Greg spent a long period of time in villages in the Karokorum mountains, in Pakistan. His first project was a bridge over the Braldu River, which allowed the community to transport building materials to the village of Corfe, in which his first school was built. Ernie provided funding for these first two projects and subsequently established the Central Asia Institute as a nonprofit organization in the United States in 1996. Mortenson was appointed director. Ernie died a year later from leukemia. The first ICA board of directors decided to focus the organization’s efforts on the Carocorum in Pakistan in order to establish relations with other community projects in the region ^[3] .

By the end of the 1990s, ICA began to spread to other remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. By 2008, ICA had established 55 schools in Pakistan and 9 schools in Afghanistan. Of these 64 schools, 43 are for girls. ^[4] In 2011, the organization began working in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region , in eastern Tajikistan. ICA also completed various projects in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s ^[4] .

The history of the founding of CAI was described in 2006 in the bestseller (according to the New York Times ^[6] ) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin ^[7] .

Institute of Central Asia:

• built and maintains 170 rural schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan
• 687 fully or partially supported teachers
• Education for over 58,000 students, including 44,000 girls
• Continuous training for the victims of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. The earthquake killed 74,000 people, of which 18,000 were students, and 2,800,000 refugees were displaced. CAI has already rebuilt or is recovering 16 schools destroyed by the earthquake.

Before the CAI starts building the school, the village must agree to increase the enrollment of girls by 10% per year. Mortenson, like many experts, believes that providing education for girls directly helps to reduce infant mortality and fertility - which, in turn, reduces ignorance and poverty, which are fuel for religious extremism ^[8] .

CAI sponsors and otherwise supports the Pennies for Peace program, where students collect small coins - pennies (the common name for a cent , 1/100 US dollars ) to help the Fund ^{[9] [10]} . The program aims to increase cross-cultural literacy through education to promote peace ^{[11] [12]} .

The Penny for Peace program was founded in 1995 as the Penny for Pakistan. The founders were two elementary school teachers, Susy Eisele and Sandy Heikkila, from West Side Elementary School in River Falls, Wisconsin , USA. They were inspired by a report made by Greg Mortenson about the harsh conditions children learn in Corfu, Pakistan. First, they raised $ 620 in pennies, which helped pay for materials to build a school in Corfu. The program received a prize in memory of Richard Lewandowski for humanitarian activities in 1997 ^[13] .

The idea of ​​the program is that in developed countries, “pennies are largely useless, but in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan you can buy a lot of pennies. With one penny, schools can buy a pencil for the student. With a pencil, a student can become literate and educated. ” Mortenson believes that it is necessary to strengthen the world through education, especially the education of girls, because: "If you raise a boy, you bring up a person, if you bring up a girl, you bring up society."

As of November 2009, the program has collected thirty million pennies since its inception, and is registered in more than 4800 schools in the United States and about twenty countries.