Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1: Arrival in Pakistan, 1962
Chapter 2: Work Assignment, 1962
Chapter 3: The Vision, 1962
Chapter 4: Living Village Life, 1962
Chapter 5: The End of the Beginning, 1962
Chapter 6: Arrival Pakistan, 2009
Chapter 7: Work Assignment, 2009
Chapter 8: A Clearer Vision, 2009
Chapter 9: An Introduction to The Citizens Foundation
Chapter 10: Setting up Training, 1963 and 2009
Chapter 11: Behind The Citizens Foundation
Chapter 12: Training Karachi, 2009
Chapter 13: Arrival in Lahore, 2009
Chapter 14: Training in Lahore, 2009
Chapter 15 Summer Science Camps, Lahore
Chapter 16: The Gymkhana Club, 2009
Chapter 17: Sheikhupura and Dhamke, 2009
Chapter 18: Khanewal and Harappa, 2009
Chapter 19: Leaving Lahore, 2009
Chapter 20: Islamabad: Modern Pakistan
Chapter 21: Hunza: Another Pakistan
Chapter 22: Pakistan: Unfinished Business
Notes
Index
About the Author
Leslie Noyes Mass began her career as an educator 50 years ago in Pakistan as one of the first Peace Corps volunteers. After returning to the United States she earned her Ph.D at The Ohio State University in early and middle childhood education. She became the director of the early childhood center at Ohio Wesleyan University, from which she retired in 2007. Dr. Mass is also the author of In Beauty May She Walk, Hiking the Appalachian Trail at 60 and the former editor of The Thru-Hiker Companion, for The Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week!
A lifelong educator, Mass began her teaching career in a small
village in Pakistan as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1962. Nearly 50
years later, she revisits the country as a 68-year old volunteer
for the Citizens Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that
builds schools in the country’s poorest areas. Skillfully
interweaving letters and memories with her observations of
present-day Pakistan, her engrossing memoir gives readers a
well-rendered portrait of both eras. Returning to a more modernized
Pakistan, with cars, trucks, and buses largely replacing the
rickshaws and tongas of the 1960s, she’s struck by the
'omnipresence of Islamic law,' where there are now prayer rooms in
the airports, and liquor and beer no longer flow freely in city
restaurants. Focusing on the accomplishments of the Citizens
Foundation, which has set up hundreds of schools since 1996, and
where girls now make up 50% of their enrollment, a 'staggering
achievement in Pakistan,' she interviews the organization’s CEOs,
administrators, teachers, students, family members, and ayahs,
finding people from all educational levels and social classes
trying to solve the country’s education problems. A descriptive,
often vivid writer, Mass evokes the cities, villages, schools,
mountain retreats, and people of Pakistan, putting a human face on
a paradoxical country that she acknowledges still faces immense
problems.
*Publishers Weekly*
In 1962, young, naive, and hopeful 21-year-old Peace Corp volunteer
Mass went off to change the lives of women in Pakistan. What she
found was an undefined job and a village totally unprepared for a
young American woman. Fast-forward almost 50 years, and Mass is
back in Pakistan, this time as a 68-year-old volunteer in the
summer of 2009 with the Citizens Foundation (an amazing Pakistani
organization that is creating schools to teach poor children).
Moving back and forth between 1962 and 2009, Mass shows readers how
things have changed for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Through Mass's interactions with the people at the Citizens
Foundation, we come to see a side of modern Pakistan that is not
often shown on the nightly news—that of caring and hardworking
Pakistanis taking responsibility (and without any foreign help) to
create schools that will make a difference in the lives of their
children, society, and country. Verdict A moving glimpse into the
life of an American who wanted to make a difference in the lives of
others. Recommended for those who read in education, travel, and
South Asian studies.
*Library Journal*
Like many idealistic and altruistic young people in the early
1960s, Mass spent her post-college years as a Peace Corps
volunteer, one of the first recruits in President Kennedy’s nascent
international outreach program. Sent to Pakistan with a great deal
of enthusiasm but little real direction, Mass was challenged to
create an educational program in a small village, in which such
Western basics as electricity and plumbing were luxuries, and
Eastern religions and customs could present overwhelming roadblocks
to success. Given an opportunity to return to Pakistan in 2009,
Mass jumped at the chance to revisit the country that was so
formative to her development as an educator. Filled with the
sights, sounds, and even smells of this exotic and still relatively
unknown land, Mass’ memoir blends past journal entries with
contemporary observations to paint a detailed and expressive
portrait of a country that has made remarkable strides in its
educational system even as it faces ongoing trials because of the
region’s political and economic instability.
*Booklist*
Leslie Mass offers a comprehensive and real picture of the
education crisis in Pakistan, including her first-hand knowledge of
the infamous madrassa's with solid recommendations for change and
national reform. Her work in Pakistan gives her the unique
credentials to present these perspectives.
*Amjad Noorani, adviser to the Board of the Citizens Foundations,
USA (TCF-USA), educational reform activist*
The awe inspiring journey of Leslie Mass through the length and
breath of Pakistan is a fascinating and insightful read.
*Nilofer Saeed, business woman and entrepreneur*
This book is an exceptionally useful, insightful, and interesting
read from a range of perspectives. Whether concerned with social
and economic development dynamics, cross-cultural interaction, or
illustration of outstanding innovative initiatives by citizens of a
developing country trying to reach across long ingrained and
stratified social and economic barriers, you’ll learn something
here.
*Robert C. Morris, Georgia Southern College, Statesboro*
A simple, engaging read. Leslie Mass has emphatically made a point
about Pakistanis that is missed all too often—that Pakistanis are
people: people with souls, people with opinions, people with a
commitment to nurture a positive, dynamic future for their country,
people with stories of positive change in the face of immense
adversity—stories that are missed all too often but captured in
this very 'human' narrative.
*Nida Alavi, Global Partner from Pakistan for Design for Change and
Founding Member of Volunteer Karachi*
In 1963, Leslie Mass left a Pakistani village pretty sure that she
hadn’t accomplished much as a young Peace Corps volunteer.When she
returned 46 years later, she was amazed to discover that villagers
still told stories about a young American woman who had come to
live among them.
*Columbus Dispatch*
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