We received an email challenge which has gotten us so excited, but we need your help.

We have been challenged to take $100 and, between now and midnight on Sunday, September 6, see what can be done with the $100 to make the biggest difference in the lives of others.

The Prize

If it turns out we make the biggest difference with our $100, we will win 2 tickets to the taping of the Oprah Winfrey show on September 25th in Chicago.

Being big fans of Oprah, and being strong believers in the ability of one person to make a difference, this was one challenge we couldn’t pass up.

The Cause

After thinking long and hard, we’ve picked a cause and we hope you can support it.  Andreas and I have recently finished reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Support Peace…One School at a Time.

For those of you who haven’t read it, Three Cups of Tea is the autobiography of Greg Mortensen, a remarkable man who has dedicated his life to promoting education, especially for girls, in the remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Since 1993, he, along with the organization he co-founded, the Central Asia Institute, have established over 90 schools in the rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide for (or have provided) education to over 34,000 students, including 24,000 girls, where little or no educational opportunities existed.

The philosophy of focusing on girls is “Educate a boy and you educate an individual.  Educate a girl and you educate a community.”  Several global studies have shown that sending girls to school significantly decreases infant and maternal mortality rates, helps stabilize population growth, and improves the quality of health and life for everyone in the community.  And, educated mothers are less likely to condone their son’s joining terrorist groups.  Building schools and providing an education in an unstable part of the world has a direct impact on safety and security around the world.

More information on Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute can be found at http://www.threecupsoftea.com/ and https://www.ikat.org/.

The Goal

Our goal for this challenge is to increase awareness for this cause, and to encourage the donation of over $5,000 by Sunday.

Did you know how little it takes to make a difference?  Consider this:

$20………One student’s school supplies for one year
$50………One treadle sewing machine and supplies
$100……..Maternal health care supplies for 1 year
$600 …….One teacher’s annual salary
$800……..One advanced student’s annual scholarship
$5,000…..Support for existing school for 1 year
$50,000…One school building and support for up to 5 years

Wouldn’t it be something if together we could raise enough to build and support a school?

How You Can Help

We’d like to rally all of you to make a contribution to this amazing cause.  Some suggestions of things that you can do to help:

• Read the Three Cups of Tea book and pass it onto a friend to read.  Or share it amongst the staff at your office.
• Encourage a young person in your life to read Three Cups of Tea - Young Reader’s Edition or Listen to the Wind - the children’s book version
• Make Three Cups of Tea the selection at your next book club
• Donate copies of the book to your local library or school
• Recommend the book to a teacher or principal so that they can introduce it to their students
• Send a copy of the book to your MP and MLA with a note encouraging them to read the book and support local and global educational and literary initiatives
• Blog, Facebook, YouTube and/or Tweet about the book
• Forward this email to others who you think would be interested in this cause.
• Buy a copy of the book off this page (http://www.threecupsoftea.com/purchase-three-cups-of-tea/) and up to 7% will be donated to the Central Asia Institute
• Start a Pennies for Peace campaign at your office, church, or kid’s school.  A penny buys a pencil in Pakistan, several pennies buys paper and books. 100 pennies pays a teacher’s salary for a day.
• Donate to the Central Asia Institute - https://www.ikat.org/ (Note: This is a US charity - Canadians who donate may not get a tax deduction for the donation)
• And anything else you can think of!

Taking Action

We know that there are many great causes out there to support.  We were truly inspired by the impact that Greg Mortensen has had on the world - we hope you can spend a few moments in the next few days supporting this cause, too.

If this speaks to you, please send us an email at info@clearhrconsulting.com by 9 pm on Sunday September 6 2009 to let us know what you have done to help this cause.

If you could use the “share this” widget at the bottom of the post to keep the goodwill going it would be appreciated.

We would love to win the Oprah tickets & see the show live but, really, whether we win the tickets or not, the real winners are the children who will become future community leaders and the promotion of peace in a volatile part of the world.

Look forward to hearing what you all do!