Well, another heroic philanthropist has been exposed as having feet of clay – or maybe, in this case, feet of a particularly more disgusting substance.
“60 Minutes” has blown the whistle on “Three Cups of Tea” author Greg Mortenson. For those of you who don’t read a lot of “inspirational” books, like me, Mortenson claims that after a climbing expedition on the world’s second-highest mountain, he got lost and was rescued by some mountain villagers in Pakistan, whom he paid back by building them a school. Later, he said, the Taliban kidnapped him for eight days.
Oh, and he also cured cancer. Okay, he never claimed to do that. But if he had, it would have been as truthful as all the other stuff.
He formed something called the Central Asia Institute to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan and apparently was raiding that cookie jar pretty regularly. And he fooled some heavy hitters; President Obama gave $100,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize money to the institute.
Mortenson claimed to have built 140 schools, mostly for girls. “60 Minutes” checked 30 of them and about half were empty, built by somebody other than Mortenson or not getting any money at all. Some of the empty ones were being used as warehouses.
Of course, Mortenson wouldn’t talk to “60 Minutes,” so they resorted to an ambush interview at a book signing. Mortenson’s minions arranged for security to escort the crew out and he eventually scuttled out the back door of the hotel.
It’s a story that’s almost dreary. It doesn’t happen every day, at least not on this scale, but it happens regularly enough to be depressing.
The guy isn’t total slime – he’s actually built a fair number of the schools he claims he did and they’ve done some good in a part of the world where life remains nasty, brutish and short. But he’s apparently paid himself back for that, in spades. When it’s all said and done, he’ll make the talk-show mea culpa circuit, say the drugs or booze or poor self-image made him do it, write another book and live quite comfortably. And the world will be a slightly more cynical place.
The lesson here, children, is that charity begins at home.
Building schools in third-world countries is a laudable goal. Doing so can make some pretty bleak lives better, always a good thing. And from a practical level, if we can show people in those countries that American foreign policy doesn’t just consist of bombing them back into the Stone Age (a five-minute trip for many of them), they just might not grow up to be Al Qaeda recruits.
But guess what: there’s a family on your block that’s having a tough time. One of your kid’s classmates is having difficulty learning to read. The Special Olympics needs volunteers.
Personally, I’ve always preferred to volunteer my time for things, rather than money. For one thing, I’ve never had much money to give. And I’m just a hands-on kinda guy. I like seeing the effects of what I do.
And there’s a real need out there for volunteers, for hands, for boots on the ground, in Fargo-Moorhead and everywhere. People are very, very busy. A lot of charitable organizations have seen donations drop; when that happens, the first thing they do is cut back on staff, meaning there are fewer people to do the day-to-day work, and when it comes to an actual charitable event, it gets hard to find enough people to actually carry it off.
My personal favorites were Special Olympics and the Holiday Clearing Bureau. Volunteering for Special Olympics was almost selfish. When an actual event was going on, that particular spot was the single happiest place in the universe. I loved being there, for no other reason than that it was literally impossible to be in a bad mood. And at least in F-M, the hard core of volunteers has been doing it for so long that they have the drill down perfectly.
As for the Holiday Clearing Bureau, it’s probably the most direct expression of the Christmas spirit.
The thing is, if you want to volunteer you can find the perfect way to suit your temperament. Don’t really like contact with other people? Stock the shelves at the food pantry. You could probably go a whole day and talk to maybe two folks and still do a tremendous amount of good in the process.
You’d also be surprised at how little effort volunteering takes. Charitable organizations are often so short-handed that it helps tremendously to have someone around to do the smallest, most seemingly insignificant jobs. Even the most torpid couch potato has a chance to help in real, material, needed ways.
The other thing is, think about doing some volunteer work this summer. Everybody wants to ring bells or hand out Christmas presents, but when charitable groups need help in the dog days of summer, they often have real trouble. Need does not operate on a convenient time schedule.
You don’t have to build schools in Pakistan (and lie about it afterwards) to make a real difference in peoples’ lives. You just have to pick up the phone, ask a few questions and show up where you’re needed. You won’t regret it. And “60 Minutes” won’t show up at your door.