Central Asia Institute

The Central Asia Institute (CAI) is an American non-profit organization, co-founded by Greg Mortenson and Jean Hoerni. Its mission is to promote and provide community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has its headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.

Projects

Spokespersons for Central Asia Institute state that the organization supports:

• 170 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan
• 687 fully or partially supported teachers
• Education for more than 58,000 students, including 44,000 girls
• Ongoing education for victims of the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake. The quake killed 74,000 people, including 18,000 students, and displaced 2.8 million refugees. CAI has rebuilt or re-established 16 schools destroyed in the earthquake., Karin Ronnow, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, April 2, 2008

"A village must agree to increase girls’ enrollment by 10% a year" before CAI will build a school. "Mortenson believes, as do many experts, that providing education for girls directly helps to lower infant mortality and bring down birth rates—which in turn reduces the ignorance and poverty that help fuel religious extremism."

CAI also...
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