Greg Mortenson John Wood

The story of John Wood’s venture:John Wood was stressed out with office

life working at Microsoft so he decided to take a vacation to the mountainous terrain of Nepal to get away from the office life for some time. While trekking, he chanced a remote school. Talking to the teacher there John found that there were almost no books inside the library, John promised that he would return with many more books. He then started a small email-based book donation, asking friends and family to give away books so he could bring it to the school. He returned to the school with over a thousand books on a yaks back.

The story of Greg Mortenson’s venture:

Greg Mortenson was weak and exhausted after a failed attempt to conquer K2, the worlds second tallest mountain. He wandered away from his team and was wandering in the wilderness until he stumbled across a remote village, where they took him in, treated him and took care of him. When he recovered, Greg found that the village had no school built. Hence, as a way to return the favour for the hospitality of the villagers, he promised that he would build a school for them. He returned with building materials for them to build a school for the village.

After the success of the donation to the school he had found, John Wood wrote the book “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World”. The book was featured on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and John received around $3 million and hence started “Room to Read”, a global non-profit organization focused on literacy and gender equality in education.

Room to Read currently operates inside ten countries within Asia & Africa, and has reached to around 10 million children. It has also opened over 12500 libraries and 1500 schools.

Greg Mortenson went on to write two books, “Three Cups of Tea”, and “Stones into Schools”. He co-founded the Central Asia Institute, which was an organization which aimed to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Central Asia Institute reports that has built over 171 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to 64,000 children, including 54,000 girls, where little education opportunities existed before, especially in the remote countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wood_(activist) http://www.leavingmicrosoftbook.com/author.html http://www.leavingmicrosoftbook.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Mortenson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stones_into_Schools

Team Members: Andrew Leng (Leader) Kieran Thein Jarren Woo Timothy Mok