WATERVILLE – Colby College has announced that peace advocate Greg Mortenson, who climbed the world’s second-highest mountain in 1993, will be the keynote speaker at next year’s commencement.

Mortenson is co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute and founder of Pennies for Peace, education and literacy programs in remote mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After Mortenson scaled Pakistan’s K2, he met a group of children writing with sticks in the sand. That inspired a humanitarian campaign that has established more than 60 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that provide education to more than 25,000 children.

Mortenson is co-author of The New York Times bestseller “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time.”