LOST BOYS MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Ayuel Leek Deng and Beny Ngor Chol, co-authors (with Barbara Youree)of Courageous Journey, have plans to make a difference in this world, using their experiences and expertise. Through their new non-profit organization, Lost Boys Face Foundation, they are working toward creating a Multi-Purpose Center for the disabled in Southern Sudan. Here’s the plan:
LBFF Initial Project:
Multi-Purpose Center to be located in Southern Sudan
Concept: A Multi-Purpose Center will be built to host a variety of activities to benefit disabled men, women and children. These individuals will be trained in marketable skills, such as carpentry, masonry, weaving, clothing manufacture, metal work, tanning and leather work, growing vegetables and preparation of food, basic medical skills for helping to run a medical clinic for minor illnesses and first aid.
All these products will be sold to the local community. The profit will be shared between the disabled producer and the Center. In time, the Center will become self-supporting and the disabled self-reliant.
Classes will also be taught to both the disabled and the community at large on such topics as sanitation, sign language for the deaf, family planning and prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases.
The need: Sudan is a war-torn country with a 2008 population of 39,445,000, over 40% under the age of 15. The long civil war between the North (Arabic Muslim) and the South (Black Christian and Animist) took two million lives and displaced four million people, many of whom still live in refugee camps outside the country. According to Dr. John Garang, head of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and Vice-President of Sudan after the Peace Agreement in 2005 (until his untimely death shortly thereafter), estimated that 39.2% of the people of Sudan are disabled, most from war injuries and mutilation by having hands or legs cut off.
Beny and some of his staff at Kakuma
Expertise to make the project a reality: Beny Chol, President of LBFF, served as Manager of the Community-Based Rehabilitation Program in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. As a Lost Boy himself, he worked under the direction of the International Rescue Committee and had 120 paid staff under him. In addition, 595 volunteers formed the Community Based Rehabilitation Committee who helped identify, register, and organize the disabled for the program. He supervised the types of programs envisioned for the Multi-Purpose Center.
Ayuel Leek, Vice-President of LBFF, also a Lost Boy, worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Kakuma. He was trained in counseling, visiting the sick, and helping children deal with their war traumas through drama.
Both Beny and Ayuel are still in contact with several persons, both disabled and not, who worked in Kakuma and are skillful and willing to make this dream a reality. They and other Americans, board members and donors will periodically make visits to see how the Center is progressing. Beny will be in Kenya and Sudan in December 2008 and January 2009. He will check out possibilities of purchasing property for the Center in Juba, Jongulei or Unity State. He has contacts in these areas.
To be part of making this dream a reality, go to Lost Boys Face Foundation and click on Contact Us.
