SALEM — Bates Elementary School teacher Amanda Campbell saw the wheels turning in her students' minds as they read Greg Mortenson's story.
She knew the message resonated when they made decisions like opting to donate their pocket change rather than using it to buy an eraser at the school store.
"We had some great discussions," said Campbell, an English Language Learner teacher. "One dollar will educate a student in Pakistan for an entire month. What would we have if every student brought in four pennies? Just thinking about it like that."
Local schoolchildren have been collecting funds for "Pennies for Peace," a program that supports Greg Mortenson's efforts to promote education, especially for girls, and to build schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The children plan to present the donation to Mortenson when the author and humanitarian visits Salem next Saturday to accept the Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice.
"The children are excited, and I think they learned a lot," said T. Jane Dwyer, director of the Early Childhood Center in the Salem Schools, who also serves on the Salem Award committee.
"I thought the 'Pennies for Peace' would be a good thing to do for the schools," Dwyer said, "This will get the Salem Award better known in the community, and the children have a better understanding of human rights issues in the world."
Mortenson, who will accept the award May 1 at Salem High School, is the author of the best-sellers "Three Cups of Tea" and the recently released sequel, "Stones Into Schools."
Since staggering half-frozen into a village in the mountains of northern Pakistan in 1993 after failing to reach the summit of K2 as a mountain climber, Mortenson has gone on to launch a nonprofit foundation that has built more than 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a special focus on girls' education, and completed numerous public works projects.
While not away in central Asia building schools, he travels the country promoting his message of "peace with books, not bombs."
"He feels instead of bombs and fighting," Dwyer said, "you build credibility within a community and effect more positive change by building schools."
There is also a curriculum associated with the "Pennies for Peace" program that some local school staff have implemented along with the fundraising effort.
"It's a really good quality curriculum," Dwyer said.
Letters went home to families in all of the schools, and teachers have discussed the books with students.
"For the price of three iPods, which so many people around here have, it hires a teacher for one year," Dwyer said.
Mortenson also wrote a children's book version of his experiences, "Listen to the Wind," which Cornerstone Books donated to all of the Salem elementary schools to aid with the "Pennies for Peace" program.
"In the classrooms where I've been, they're just amazed about every single thing about the culture and how it's so different from them," Dwyer said, "but we teach them a lot about what's the same, as well. People have families, they have needs and they want to learn."
Cornerstone donated a young readers edition of "Three Cups of Tea" to the middle schools, and both the young readers and adult editions of "Three Cups of Tea" to Salem High School, as well as Mortenson's newest book, "Stones Into Schools."
At the ceremony next Saturday, Dwyer said there will be one student from the Salem Public Schools, one student from The Phoenix School in Salem, and a student each from Georgetown and Reading who will present the "Pennies for Peace" donations to Mortenson. All of those schools have been fundraising for the foundation.
"I know we are so fortunate to have books, paper and pencils," said Campbell, who teaches at Bates and at Collins Middle School. "We're not writing on the ground with sticks. I knew his story would really speak to my students."
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