They say timing is everything. And for a fairly new nonprofit that hopes to raise $50,000 to build a school in rural Pakistan, there’s no time like the present to host a fundraiser.
With Aspen Ideas Fest and the busy Fourth of July weekend wrapping up, Monday, July 7 is probably blank on most social calendars, but close enough to those major events to draw plenty of well-heeled attendees.
But Silbi Stainton, a Carbondale resident who founded the Marshall Direct Fund last year, encourages anyone with an interest in the cause, no matter the means, to attend its Monday fundraiser at the Aspen home of Soledad and Bob Hurst.
“It’s for anyone who just wants to help; I don’t care if you want to buy a ticket or contribute $100,000,” said Stainton. Tickets to the Mad Tea Party are $250.
For anyone who has read “Three Cups of Tea” or has heard the story of Greg Mortenson, the mission of the Marshall Direct Fund will sound familiar.
Its first goal is to build a primary school in Karahi, a village of about 7,000 people roughly 40 miles from the capital of Islamabad. This impoverished rural farming community has a literacy rate of 7 percent for women and girls, and 27 percent for men and boys. The only school in the area, about 5 miles away, only accepts boys because it doesn’t have the funds to educate both sexes, and most of the children work in the fields with their parents.
But building a school is more like planting a seed than just an immediate necessity. In Half of Pakistan’s 170 million people are under the age of 18, and half the adults are illiterate, so there’s more opportunity for education there than just about any country in the world.
The grain of the idea was planted in Stainton when she was in Harvard graduate school studying counterterrorism. There she met Hassan Abbas, a Pakistani and now a Harvard professor who grew up in Karahi and worked as a police chief in the northwest region.
“I just realized studying counterterrorism that (illiteracy) is not a good situation — it makes it really easy for terrorists to prey on these children,” said Stainton. “I just thought something should be done.”
But it took some time for the idea to become a reality. Stainton and her husband (who lived in the valley in his youth) moved back to Colorado six years ago, and started a family. (The couple have two young children.) When Stainton was ready to get back into the workforce, she expressed her desire to help the people of Pakistani, her husband advised her to go for it, and work on the Marshall Direct Fund started last May.
The nonprofit’s name comes from the Marshall Plan, a reconstruction plan for the allied countries of Europe that were heavily damaged from World War II. The plan focused on economic and technical assistance, and the Marshall Direct Fund, said Stainton, “is a way to unleash the Marshall Plan in our own way.”
After building its first school, a project which Abbas will oversee, the Marshall Direct Fund will follow up with a micro-credit fund. Often called “banking for the poor,” micro-loans are just as they sound — small loans, perhaps $200-500, for entrepreneurs in poor areas to start and sustain a small business. The loans are paid back within a year, and relieve the businessperson from having to rely on the often predatory lenders in their area.
Another benefit of micro-loans, said Stainton, is that “every dollar donated is recycled, because people repay these loans so the money will be used again and again.”
The idea is to jump-start a local money and eventually stop relying on foreign funding.
Stainton, whose academic connections are proving useful, is relying on a board of advisors for a range of expertise. At least two Pakistanis, including Abbas, sit on the board. The other, Imran Khan, is a former Pakistani protocol officer who is currently running much of the in-country operations.
Another local woman, Nina Kolbe, is a micro-finance expert, and a professor of diplomacy and scholar on Islamic law and emerging markets rounds out the board.
Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan, who hails from a family known for its widespread philanthropy in Aspen, is co-chairing Monday’s event. (Stainton and Scanlan met at Aspen Valley Hospital while birthing their children.)
After this first school, the Marshall Direct Fund plans to continue building schools in select areas of Southwest Asia, focusing on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.
And Stainton plans to hold more local fundraisers, including “ones for people like you and me, maybe a barbecue at my house,” she said. “It’d be great to get everybody involved in some small way.”
The Mad Tea Party will be held from 5-8 p.m. Monday. For more information, to purchase a ticket or make a donations, contact Silbi Stainton at 963-3150 or silbi@marshalldirectfund.org.
lutz@aspendailynews.com
