Table of Contents

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

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.

Reviews

 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*