Stafford resident Mark Wehle is working on Iraq's power grid. This note thanks him for supplies collected here. View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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Local Eagle Scout project puts school supplies into hands of young students in Iraq

Date published: 6/22/2008

By MICHAEL ZITZ

Last year, a Stafford County teen asked his father for help with an Eagle Scout project.

The outcome created a connection between Muslims and Mormons as well as an increased understanding between people in a village near Baghdad and people in the Fredericksburg area.

Many stories of despair come out of Iraq.

This is a story of hope.

Stafford County resident Mark Wehle is a civilian engineer working with the Army Corps of Engineers to get Iraq's crumbling power grid up and running. It's a vital mission in a war-torn country that has experienced five years of increasing frustration over the fact that most residents have electricity for only a couple of hours a day.

The 48-year-old Wehle, who's working at the Al-Quds Power Plant, north of Baghdad on the Iraq Power Project for the Washington Group of Boise, Idaho, wants Iraqi children to have lights to study--both in schools and at home. Because of his work in Iraq, those children are never far from his thoughts.

So last year, Wehle's then 17-year-old son Matthew was looking for an idea for his Eagle Scout project, one quickly came to mind: helping young Iraqis by collecting badly needed school supplies.

Matthew, a 2007 Mountain View High School graduate, asked his father what he could do to make a difference and to help Americans understand the plight of those children.

When he asked his father what he could do to help, Mark Wehle asked Iraqis at the power plant.

The sheik of a nearby village said its two schools needed supplies. Mark Wehle was surprised and moved that the sheik didn't ask for big-ticket items like computers. Instead, he requested small, inexpensive things like pens and pencils, notebooks, construction paper and glue.

Though a world apart, father and son worked together long-distance on the humanitarian project, mounting a campaign to provide help two elementary schools--one for girls and one for boys--in an Iraqi village just outside Baghdad.

Both are essentially mud huts, Mark Wehle said.

Date published: 6/22/2008