A photograph of Elizabeth Tschursin sitting in the snow-capped Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan hangs over a doorway in her mother’s Santa Fe home.
“That’s when she was the happiest,” said Diana MacArthur, who calls her daughter Leeza.
After Tschursin took her own life in 1994 at the age of 39, MacArthur longed for a way to honor her daughter. She found the answer more than a decade ago in a remote region of Pakistan where Tschursin had taught science years earlier.
On Tuesday, the Al-Murtaza Academy’s Elizabeth Tschursin Memorial Campus — a $3.5 million school located in the remote Hunza Valley of Gilgit-Balistan — opened its doors to about 400 Pakistani students. MacArthur, the project’s leader, said the school will not only commemorate Tschursin but also give new life to a community she had adored.
The campus will be given to the Aga Khan Foundation, an international nonprofit, during a celebration Sunday. The foundation, which will help with maintaining the school, “has the finances and can pour resources on the community,” MacArthur said.
Read this incredible story at the source: http://www.santafenewmexican.com – Olivia Harlow – Sep 8, 2018. For the photographs of the school building, visit their Facebook page here.
American Girl Falls in Love with Hunza – Hands Across the Mountains
In 1993, Elizabeth Tschursin, a young American girl journeyed to the Hunza valley in Pakistan and fell in love with the place and its people. This is the story of how her visit led to the plans to build a model school in the small village of Murtazabad.
Ismailimail 
May Elizabeth’s soul rest in eternal peace. What a gift of education in her memory by a great mother.
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It takes a Mother’s wisdom to recognize our needs and give us reassurance by her loving words and needs; I can see Leeza with a joyful heart and happy smile
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