Valentino Achak Deng was a young Dinka boy in southern Sudan in the 1980s when his village was destroyed by government militia. He became one of the over 25,000 refugee children collectively known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." Valentino spent nine years living in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya before emigrating to the US in 2001. In 2003, he met American writer Dave Eggers, and the two collaborated on the fictionalized "What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng." The two always intended for the proceeds from the book to support Valentino's hometown of Marial Bai in Sudan. They created the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation as a vehicle for this. In May 2009, the Foundation opened the Marial Bai Secondary School, the only "fully functioning secondary school in the entire region." The school is free and admissions policies favor orphans. However, many families wouldn't let their daughters attend, so Valentino built a girls' dormitory, and now 100 girls are able to live on-campus and focus on school full-time. The school has 260 students total. [more inside]
posted by bluedaisy on Aug 17, 2010 - 12 comments

"By the time Emmanuel Jal was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of his fellow child soldiers reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of Southern Sudan. After a series of harrowing events, he was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi to raise him as her own. To help ease the pain of what he had experienced, Emmanuel started singing..." [more inside]
posted by Kerasia on Jun 3, 2009 - 4 comments

Lost Boys of Sudan is an amazing documentary about refugees from Sudan's Darfur conflict finding haven in the US. It's premiering on PBS tomorrow. Their website has local PBS listings as well as locations and times of upcoming screenings in the US. From sleeping on the ground in a UN refugee camp to working at WalMart in Dallas, the men in the film undertake an enormously difficult, but ultimately life-saving journey.
posted by scarabic on Sep 27, 2004 - 8 comments

The Lost Boys of the Sudan are a group of nearly 17,000 orphans whose parents were murdered and whose homes were destroyed by a government miltary turned against them. They marched on foot, without food or water, under attack from hungry predators & occasional strafing miltary fire for several years until settling in a squalid refugee camp in Kenya; nearly a decade later, the U.S. began a humanitarian policy of importing them, a few at a time, and resettling the lucky few in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Fargo, N.D. (NYTimes, reg req'd)
posted by jonson on Jan 3, 2003 - 14 comments