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One of the biggest challenges confronting any assistance effort in another country is adapting good intentions to the habits, values, and aspirations of the local culture. No one has done it better and under more adverse circumstances than Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute.

In 1993, Mortenson was descending from a failed attempt to reach the peak of the world’s second-highest mountain, K2 in Pakistan’s rugged Karakoram Mountains. He was exhausted and disoriented. He wandered away from his group and wound up in a poor Pakistani village, where he recovered his health. While there, he saw the village children outdoors, trying to learn without a paid teacher, books, or learning materials. He promised to return and build them a school.

When he got back to the United States, he sold virtually all he owned for just $2,000. He wrote letters to nearly six hundred celebrities for help. Only Tom Brokaw sent him a check for $100. Then elementary school students in River Falls, Wisconsin, gave him $623 in pennies. After that, adults started to help. In 1996, Dr. Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley microchip entrepreneur, gave Mortenson a large amount of money to establish the Central Asia Institute, and the work took off. By 2007, Mortenson and the Institute had established fifty-eight schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan and had educated more than 24,000 children, including 14,000 girls. They have also trained teachers and established libraries.

Mortenson’s work is a potential model for others for two reasons. First, its projects are entirely initiated, implemented, and managed by local communities, empowering local people and dramatically increasing the chance of success.

Second, the program is financed by very small as well as large contributors, providing children in the United States the chance to contribute and learn how different life is for kids in poor nations. Pennies for Peace solicits pennies from schoolchildren over a fixed period of time, usually two or three months. Only pennies are collected and students learn that, while a penny won’t buy anything in the United States anymore, it buys a pencil and opens doors to literacy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many other NGOs could involve kids in this way, harnessing their energy to help others, teaching them about the needs in their community and the world, and cultivating the next generation of givers.

Mortenson has chronicled his “mission to promote peace, one school at a time” in his fine book, Three Cups of Tea.

IN THE UNITED STATES, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has been working with distressed communities since 1980 to promote the same kind of comprehensive economic progress the Millennium Development Goals envision for poor nations. LISC works through local community development corporations to create affordable housing, commercial, industrial, and community facilities, businesses, and jobs. It provides loans, grants, and equity investments, technical and management assistance, and support for more helpful government policies.

I am always surprised by how few Americans have heard about LISC’s remarkable work. Since 1980, LISC has raised more than $7.8 billion from 3,100 investors, lenders, and donors. The funds have been put to use in more than 300 urban neighborhoods and rural communities to help 2,800 organizations build or rehabilitate more than 196,000 affordable houses and nearly 30 million square feet of retail, community, and educational space. LISC operations have created more than 70,000 jobs, helped more than 100 businesses, developed 53 supermarkets and farmers’ markets, built 120 child-care facilities for 11,000 kids, renovated 136 playing fields serving 120,000 children, and financed 80 schools for 28,000 students.

Since 2003, LISC has worked to make the most of the 25 percent New Markets Tax Credit for investments in commercial projects, museums, and artist spaces in poor neighborhoods and rural communities. It’s a great incentive, but most investors don’t know