very rash promise and promised to build a school. i was very broke and had to raise 12 thousand dollars and i didn't have a clue how to raise money like that. so i went to the local library. any librarians here. there's one. let's all give them a big and. [applause] so i went to the library, the resource librarian and talked to her and we looked up the name of 580 celebrities and movie stars and i didn't know how to use a computer so i and typed 580 letters. dear michael jordan, dear sylvester stallone. guess what happened? nothing. then at christmas time i got one check for $100 from tom brokaw

and then i saw my climbing ger and i sold it and i sold my car for $500 that i got from my grandfather in a seedy area in oakland. by string i o spring i had only $2,400. my mother invited me to come and talk to the kids. when i got ready to leave, a fourth grader named jeffery looked me in the aye and he said i've got a piggy bank at home and i'm going to help you build that school. west side school raised 65, 300 pennies. it wasn't the celebrities or the sports heroes or movie stars or if i lan throw pears but children reaching out to children half way around the world to help them build a

school. what can you buy with a penny the bay area? probably nothing. in montana you can buy 1/2 tootsie roll. but in afghanistan you can buy a pencil. it's not that's so important but education gives a child hope. you know, if you fight tear riz her rorism it's based in fear but the real enemy is ignorance that bleeds hatred. here in america, afghanistan, africa or pakistan. the way to overcome that i think is through education and also with having courage and compassion. instead of building walls we need to build peace and have the courage to do that.

so i went back to pakistan in 94 and brought the school supplies and finally got to the village and the man was again there to greet me. he shook his head and said, chizle what the heck. not only had i come back, he said you've made two big mistakes. we don't start building before wintertime and if you really want to build school we're going to have to build a bridge first and i hadn't really thought about that. so i came back to america and raised 10,000 more dollars. and then i got back from tack stan and bridge got built and no school yet. i was 38 years old, die hard bachelor and all i could think was getting that school built. i went to a fund raise er the fair month in san francisco

where my hero was speaking. it was getting late and people were nodding off and he was going on and on about the queens coronation so i went to the back to get some fresh air and there was a beautiful woman in the back wearing a dress and black combat books and her name was, tara bishop and six months later got married and now we're living happily ever after in montana. [applause] i also a guy name keesh ran a company called laser image and he taught me how to use a computer and tara after watching me for several days one day, i was writing the fund raising letters and i learned on the computer but she said let me show you something. it's called cut and paste. so,

with her now we could write hundreds of fund raising letters and in pakistan i learned to use a local laptop. slate board there. the whole village participated in the building school and it was a joy ous time. this is 18 miles - on that bridge - i didn't mention it but there's 5, 800 pound cables they carried up to the village. 8 men would put this with a spool and carry this up to the village. this is where they're carrying the struts and beams for the roof. what's amazing here, this man is the head man for the village. i don't know if there's clergy here, but in their culture

they're not supposed to do labor. they're suppose to give spiritual advice. he carried the first load symbolizing his advocacy for education. in the back there's the silver beard. see after three years we hadn't gotten very far. the problem wasn't them but me. i was doing something we call micromanage meant. i had my receipts and i was determined to make this school getting built without losing one dollar and village chief one day came up to me and sat me down and said son, you need to do one thing, you need to sit down and be quiet and let us do the work and he took my receipts and records and locked them in an earthen locker and he came back with his british musket gun,

when you fire it it blasts in your face and he came back and said everything will be fine. a l.a. willing. six weeks later the school got built. it was an important lesson to let go and let the communities be empowered and let them do they're work in entirety. it came time to open the school and kids came from all around and julia came all the way here from america. you could see this colorful lapel around they're neck that means bam! of courage. it's put around a newborn when they're first born to ward away evil spirits, so the kids put that around they're neck. julie you want to model this? this is a, tomar. it means badge of courage.

look at this gentlemen on the right. he has orange haier. not because he died it but because he has a disease where he's starving from protein deficiency. see the joy despite the lack of these things. it came in 96 i decided to dedicate my life to promoting literacy and building schools in that part of the world and i've gotten married and had a baby on the way, and if you want to read the book there's an 8 day kidnapping and many things happened but another thing that happened in 96, i had my first fatawa issued against me. this is not just a death decree but it can prohibit women from going shopping or it can mean

you can't watch television. in my case. it was banishing me from the country because i was helping put girls in school. i sought the advise of the head shiite in north pakistan. before you pass judgement on him, he's the good guy. very noble compassionate visionary man and he said, well let me find out and he wrote a letter to the counsel to seek clarification as to what to do with this crazy american in their midst trying put girls in school. i was summond to the intersank tum of the inner mosque. it was intimidating. there was 8 of them with their black turf bonns on anbens and a box. and in that was a letter in the

persian script and said dear compassion of the poor we reviewed your case and in koran education is inor encouraged for all children. it encourages all people to have knowledge and seek knowledge. well, um... with that letter, started getting dozens of proposals especially for girls schools. why is girls education so important? i've gone to the extent now where i say you can drop bombs and build roads or put in electricity but until the girls are implicated, society won't change. several global studies show if you educate a girl to fifth grade level it does three things. reduce infant mortality, population explosion reduction

and improve the quality of life and health. if your interested you can look up a guy called, well he wrote a book called development is freedom. it's a fat book. in the 60's another writer had the very foresite to see that girls education would be a process to bring about stabilization of population. he wrote a book called the poverty curve and jeffery sacks wrote the end of poverty in bangladesh a great example, they introduced 35 years ago to do a campaign to get all women and men or boys literate. it was 22% and today it's more than 75 percent if you look at a demographic curve with the population, you can see it's just starting to reach an apex

in bangladesh. they're way ahead of india, and pakistan. it's an impact to stabilize the population there. also, um... excuse me. you know having hard cover thing fighting terrorism with education i've learned from islamic scholars. in the koran it's implicitly stated in the holy koran when a young mangos on jiha d and this is a spiritual endeavor to seek knowledge. it could also mean he's going into a group. but he has to get blessings from

his mother first and if he doesn't do that it's shameful and disgraceful. after 911 the taliban had a high desertion rate and they were trying to get recruit groups to fight against intervention and coalition and they went in literally impoverished societies because educated women refused to allow they're sons to fight in theal bonn. you have a less educated mother here. single parent in the difficult system. the higher education a women has the more likely her son is to go on with education rather than getting into violence and drugs and certainly she won't condone her son getting into a gang or drugs. i've sometimes been criticized for that because they say all the 911 hijackers were educated

and had university degrees and that certainly is true. but nobody botherd to check they're mothers and nearly all of them were i late rate an illiterate. exciting news and then i have to unfortunately talk to you about negative news. i've been in perhaps 120 cities over the past 14 months talking to maybe 50,000 people and i ask this question most places i go and i'll ask you today. how many of you are aware of the fact in afghanistan today, there's 5 point 2 million children going to school and 1 point 8 million of those are female and in 2000 there was only 8 hundred 6,000 kids in school. how many of you know that fact? one, two, you?

so that makes my total now - i've counted 21 people in america. to me that's single most incredible inspiring news to come out of that country. that alone is justification for the sacrifice and cost and the investment in that country and nobody in america is aware of that. the media, government, the people. to me that news should be broadcast from every mountain top in this publication called hope we write about that. go and tell people there's some really good things happening and it's related to employ kabs and the number of kids in afghanistan it's gone up six fold since 2000. unfortunately there's other forces at work. in the last year the taliban have bombed more than 400 mostly

girls schools and it's travesty. what's amazing if you go back, they've been written off the government records and not getting funding but some kids are still trying go to school in these villages and i think we owe to those brave children to help those kids finish school and don't worry about the, i.e.d counts but worry about those brave children still trying go to school. this is a school we opened up in 1998. 12 girls in the front row. i asked them to increase it by ten percent a year of the they don't know how to do they're math there. this is what happened one year later. now there's two rows of girls going to school here. this is on the far left in the back, silver beard is the first man to get an education in this

school and his story is in the book. incredible story how he left the va ladies and gentlemen and his father booted him across the river and said don't come back until you get your education so he did this and he walked into this urban area and everybody was looking at him if you ask most men there in the back, what's the most proudest moment in your life, most of the men will say the birth of my first born son. not him, he will tell you the proudest moment in my life is to see my two daughters going to school here in the village. the woman on the extreme far right, she's the first girl to get an education in that valley of about 4 thousand people. she first wrote with sticks in the sand and now she's her

second year of medical school scoring in the 90's. her father said you should not become a doctor it's really messy but she's determined to go back to her village and become a physician to help her community and it's an incredible story of how like her father she's persevered. this girl is from the afghan border valley of about 4,000 people. she was the first girl to get an education in our village. the communities there are somewhat proactive about girls education, it was difficult for her at first. the boys through publs at her at first. later on a couple of teachers didn't want to teach her because she was female. in high school some of the boys stole her notebooks because they didn't want her to graduate. but she did. there's no medicine or clinic or hospital here. before she

started working in 2000 in this valley, five to 20 women died in childbirth every year so. she went to two years of training and cost us about $800 and her pay is just over a dollar a day and not one women has died since she's come back and is working there. and now i'll jump forward a bit. when we get hundreds of letters in our office and e-mails and some of the most powerful e-mails are those from our armed forces serving in afghanistan and sometimes iraq. recently i got an e-mail from a colonel. his first name is kris. he's the commander of the saber forces called,fob. ford operating base in north star province in eastern

afghanistan. one of the most difficult and dangerous areas to serve. he wrote to me first as a commander but also as a father and a husband and told me a little bit about how difficult it was and then he said, you know, he had all his guys read three cup office tea and really without education, whatever we do here is in vain. it's education is what we determined if these young men and women become literate patriots or illiterate terrorists and the stakes could not be higher. this comes from a united states military commander in the united states. i'll jump across the border and tell you why the stakes could not be higher. this is pakistan in 2005. 74,000 people were killed in this earthquake.

18,000 were kids going to school. most of the kids that died were younger and female because they didn't have desks so when the walls started shaking and the roof came down they perished. there was 9,000 schools destroyed or rendered unusable. 1/2 million kids displaced out of school. in earthquake, they call it the coy mot that means this apocalypse. at first there was a very heroic effort. infer natio international community helped. after katrina red cross got 2,000,000 for help and for this earthquake red cross received 6 million dollars.

the united states sent in helicopters that conductd the greatest air lift in the history of mankind. moved about 20 thousand on thes in the mountains to keep 1/2 million people a hive during the wintertime. it was very heroic and people were grateful. aid has dropped 70 percent after a year in the wake of that void many jihad and people labeled terrorists have set up camps. this is one here. in pakistan. and in that camp, there are many kids that are previously were going to school and now they have no school and the cost to help them go would be about one month per month per child. fifth grader 20 bucks a year. first grader five bucks a year. they get their food in the back on the mess tenth and then on

the left is an extreme place where people get indoctrined into a violent islam. because of international lack of help for those kids to get implicated these kids are here. there's another camp here. osama bin ladins first assistant. spent two-years in gann tan know bay in cuba and he's running large camp and just down that the united states, 212 mash units. what's going on is they're agenda is to get people to be dependent and indoctrinate the violent islam. unfortunately we're a nonprofit in the states if we go into the camps or talk with anybody there we're affiliating with a

terrorist organization and shut down by the, irs so we created a viral incubator for terrorists similar to what happened in afghanistan in 99. i showed this on capitol hill and they told me this was a classified photo. i took this beside the road here and you know, just to - i think this is news that should be broadcast all over. that the international community, pakistan government, nobody cares about the education of those children. one dollar per month child instead we're sending 9 $20,000 tomahawk cruise my siels when the cost of one we could build 50 schools and over a generation to educate 10,000 children.

do you think that photo should be classified? get in trouble? okay. this is - we started putting up some schools because there was not any getting put up there this is the village, 24 young girls died in the rubble here and this is a girls high school. 7 of - bodies were unclaimed. there were several that died during the earthquake. most of them had not been claimed because they're parents were also killed in the earthquake. they wanted to build a memorial around the graves to remember the loss of life had not gone in vain for the girls high school. this is patka girls high school.

also running other schools. don't have all the resources to put in buildings. this is in afghanistan and this is a ninth grade class. they're going to school in a russian, soviet, old armored personnel carrier. take a look inside. there's 12 ninth graders going to school learning english. the younger boys are going to school in a steel truck container used to bring over united states military supplies. 80 kids going to school in a truck container. the girls are outdoors going to school in the dirt with one mat one black board that keeps blowing down and they keep picking it up in the wind and one teacher. to me, the courage and hope that resonates when i see those kids - some of these young woman,

walk 1/2 hours to get to school. it's time we need to help support them and that they have the opportunity and privilege to all go to school. so, i'm - sometimes people ask ar organization and the board mass upon derd this to say half of our staff is illiterate. why do you hire illiterate people to work with literacy organization. these men and women worked for a long time for us and they're willing to go in some of the most difficult, remote or dangerous areas to risk their lives year after year just to get one girl in school and i call this is the most over achieving under qualified staff on the planet. you know, some people ask me,

well isn't it difficult or dangerous over there? what's the most difficult part about my job. the most difficult part of my job is i'm an indiana jones but i'm not, i'm a father, i'm a husband, and i'm a son - i'm just like all of you. i struggle sometimes in daily life but i'm passionate about education and i know i couldn't do this without the great love of my wife and two children who put up with me being gone. we've been married 12 months - no. 12 years. she usually doesn't come. i've been gone about 65 months of my marriage and i didn't get to see my kids first learn how to tie they're shoes or my

daughter first learn how to ride a bicycle. i did get to see, kiter learn that. i have that incredible support not only from that but wonderful communities. we could never thank all the communities for helping with the children overseas that are able to reach they're goals through - my wife said i'll preach now. so, any way, thank you. keep on-going here. [applause] and i wake up a lot of nights and my wife says go to sleep but i can't because you see a village and then it turned into this big city in mexico and then you do more and it