Three Cups of Tea Co-Author--David Oliver Relin--Addresses First-Year Students at Babson
Award-Winning Writer Kicks-Off New Student Reading Program
David Oliver Relin, Co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, will address incoming First-Year students at Babson College during the school’s inaugural New Student Reading Program on Monday, August 31st.
In Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson, and journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the journey that led Mortenson from a failed 1993 attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, to successfully establish schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to promote peace with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote communities in central Asia. Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.
Babson sent a gift copy of the book to each First-Year student to read during the summer months as part of its New Student Reading Program. “This story of social entrepreneurship will give our students a taste of Babson’s distinctive culture,” says President Leonard Schlesinger, “--a pervasive entrepreneurial spirit which will encourage them to pursue their creative passions and ideas outside, as well as inside, the classroom.”
From day one on campus, Babson motivates First-Years to engage with their fellow students and professors - asking questions, confronting challenges, and making and finding opportunities to seek change and take action. The New Student Reading Program introduces them to many members of the community who will provide support during their intellectual and personal journey.
Three Cups of Tea will be a topic for discussion with faculty and peers in small groups during the First-Year Orientation program at Babson on Monday, Aug. 31st. New students will meet David Oliver Relin (8-9:00 pm in Sorenson Center for the Arts) and have the chance to ask him questions about his experience and its impact on his life, and the lives of many others.
An informal coffee talk with Relin (10-11:30 am) will also take place with staff from Babson, Olin, and Wellesley Colleges as well as residents from the North Hill Community.
About David Oliver Relin
Relin is a graduate of Vassar and was awarded the prestigious Teaching/Writing Fellowship at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. After Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship to support his groundbreaking 1992 bicycle trip the length of Vietnam. He spent two additional years reporting about Vietnam opening to the world, while he was based in Hue, Vietnam's former imperial capital. In addition to Vietnam and Pakistan, he has traveled to, and/or reported from, much of East Asia.
For two decades, Relin has focused on reporting about social issues and their effect on children, both in the U.S., and around the world. For his work as both an editor and investigative reporter, he has won dozens of national awards. His interviews with child soldiers (including a profile of teenager Ishmael Beah, who would later write the bestseller A Long Way Gone) have been included in Amnesty International reports. And his investigation into the way the INS abused children in its custody contributed to the reorganization of that agency.
Relin is currently working on a novel about Southeast Asia and a non-fiction book about the quest to cure blindness.
