Tea Anyone?

By Kate McElhinney Have you ever read a book that’s so good you can’t put it down? You start the first chapter at 10:00 p.m., thinking you’ll read a few pages, and then drift off into a good night’s sleep. But instead, you stay up all night reading, quickly devouring every word until you triumphantly finish the story just as the sun comes up. From the moment I delved into the book Three Cups of Tea, this was the case. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but the story is about a mountain climber named Greg Mortenson who stumbles across a poor village in Pakistan during a failed attempt to climb K2. Appalled at the lack of school buildings in the community, which experiences freezing winds during the winter, Mortenson returns to the United States and begins raising money to build schools for children, particularly girls, in rural parts of the far East. Plant With Purpose has a similar story of altruism. But instead of building schools for girls, we focus on empowering poor rural farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by teaching them sustainable agro-forestry techniques. And in the past 25 years, we have seen tremendous progress as hundreds of hillsides have been reforested, thousands of micro-credit loans have been distributed, and farmers have experienced renewed hope. There are so many good causes in the world. People fighting against AIDS, sex slavery, hunger, and deforestation. What’s your cause?