Lost Boys Schools For Sudan

Interview - KJSL 630 AM: Schools for Sudan

Listen Now: The Salt & Light of St. Louis - KJSL 630 AM - Quest for Character

With: Mike Dunn

Air Date: March 2, 2010

Join us tonight 7pm to 8pm (MT) on WWW.KJSLRADIO.NET or WWW.QUESTFORCHARACTER.COM where Mike will interview Abraham Deng Ater, “A Lost Boys of Sudan,” and he will share his vision about building schools in Southern Sudan.

“The post-war children of southern Sudan look to The Lost Boys as their only hope for an education and the only opportunity for a better tomorrow.  Our mission is to provide the opportunity of an education to disadvantaged children by building sustainable primary and secondary schools throughout southern Sudan.”

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Letter to President Barack H. Obama on Sudan

November 24, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

My name is Donald Dains and the following is a snapshot of an ongoing journey that began long ago by a good friend of mine, Abraham Deng Ater, a former Lost Boy of Sudan, now a US Citizen and postgraduate student currently pursuing his Masters Degree in Public Health. His is the story of the American dream. Sadly it was a dream born of unspeakable tragedy, severe suffering and deep sadness.

Many of The Lost Boys, now men, since the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Accord have begun to return to southern Sudan for the first time in over 20 years to find and reunite with their families. All have begun the painful process of rebuilding their lives and communities in Sudan.

Abraham returned to Sudan in May of 2007. I had to go with him, to see for myself, to make it real, to try and understand. After much difficulty and many hardships during our travels, Abraham was finally reunited with his mother. It was a beautiful and life affirming moment.

I was tremendously humbled by this experience and I have never seen, nor have I encountered so much kindness and humility among people of such dire circumstances as I did during my stays in Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya and in the towns and villages throughout southern Sudan…

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was there to bear witness to their endless suffering and the purpose of my journey, I now believe, was to bring back a message and share it with you.

It’s a message of hope -hope for a better tomorrow -something that all of southern Sudan seems to be surviving on these days. It’s what has kept Abraham and thousands of boys and girls like him alive for all these years.

Mr. President, there is much work to be done.

After assessing the great need and compelled to act, Abraham and I decided upon our return we would take the necessary steps to create a public non-profit 501(c)(3) grass-roots organization to help us fund and build schools in southern Sudan. We would start in Abraham’s home village.

And so in the fall of 2007, The Deng Ater Foundation - Lost Boys Schools for Sudan was formed.

Our Mission (our hope) is to fund an educational process that will provide the opportunity of an education to disadvantaged children by building economically, socially, environmentally sustainable primary and secondary schools throughout southern Sudan.

Our focus is from the inside out. We believe in a hand up, not a hand out, and that Africans must solve Africa’s problems. But first they must be provided with the tools and an opportunity to use them if they are to succeed. And for this to occur, they need lasting peace.

We returned to southern Sudan in December of 2008 and registered as an indigenous Non-Governmental Organization with the South Sudan Relief & Rehabilitation Commission and the Government of Southern Sudan in January of 2009. A preliminary visit was made in the state of Jonglei and a suitable building site for our first school was selected just outside of Duk Fadiet within the township of Dongchak.

It was good to return once again, to see hope on the eyes of all who remembered our first visit. But this time the message from the elders was more direct -it was a plea for help and I could see the impatient expressions worn on their faces and sense the desperation in the air. We had planned to stay longer. Sadly our visit was cut short on our third day when we received word of an impending attack on the village of Duk Fadiet and were forced to leave in the cover of darkness.

Abandoning the women and children was unconscionable. We felt like cowards but the community was more concerned for our safety than that of their own. As we quickly gathered our things, a young boy armed with a machine gun appeared from the shadows and in passing said, “This is Sudan, it is a place of war,” as if to rebuke me, then he disappeared into the darkness.

An unthinkable statement for a child to make, but words never more profound. This is his reality; the reality of what is Sudan, and that thinking must change!

We left the following afternoon under the protection of an SPLA escort and we returned to Juba. The following day, the village of Duk Fadiet, and the surrounding villages, were ruthlessly attacked and several innocent people were senselessly murdered. I returned to the US shortly thereafter and regrettably the attacks continue to this day.

Fortunately, and bravely I might add, Abraham returned to his community to complete our mission and single-handedly held our first public healthcare prevention and education clinic in February of 2009. This initiative will hopefully, over time, minimize the number of deaths occurring within this community and will ultimately help stabilize the local population. I believe that our efforts within this community are their best hope. Sadly, and quite possibly, it could be their last.

Mr. President, it’s important to understand that the post-war children of southern Sudan look to the Lost Boys as their future leaders, their only hope for an education, and their only opportunity for a better tomorrow. The people of southern Sudan need our unconditional help and support now perhaps more than any single nation on the planet.

If we don’t act on their behalf to save the future generations of southern Sudan, who will?

By doing nothing, war will undoubtedly return and the threat of violence will spread throughout Sudan and the whole of greater Africa. This will further destabilize the region, which in turn will ultimately threaten the lives of millions upon millions of helpless and innocent people. We cannot allow this to happen.

Tragically the evidence of this violence is that very recently the community of Duk Fadiet, the very people we have been working so hard to help, was brutally attacked once again and by all accounts the village has been decimated. This time the attackers murdered hundreds of innocent men, women and children and the village was burned to the ground. I am haunted by the thoughts of their suffering and of those who may have survived or perished. So many faces, so many stories, and so much hope; it all seems to be lost once again.

Regrettably, the children, as always, have suffered most these ill effects of war.

Regardless, I continue to hold out hope for their plight, a last hope it seems, and in times of my own quiet desperation, I fear that we will not live up to our promise, and this call for help, their last hope, may have come too late.

I am often asked, why do I care so much and why have I taken on this seemingly impossible task? To me, the answer is simple: My soul is inextricably intertwined with their plight.

I want to personally inform you that the genocide in Sudan has never ended, it has only slowed, and I have experienced the terror and witnessed its heartbreak first hand. And although the violence “seems” to be ending in Darfur, it continues today and is “once again” gaining strength and spreading uncontrollably throughout the south.

Unfortunately, as you read this letter, the fragile peace process in southern Sudan is quickly unraveling. And I believe those who have violated the virtue of its very core must be exposed and held accountable for their ultimate betrayal and crimes against humanity.

For the greater good of humanity, we must not allow this hopelessness, this genocidal cycle of insanity to continue. The alternative is horrifyingly unimaginable and absolutely unacceptable. We must act now! The violence must stop!

Sadly though, as the violence continues to grow throughout the region, I feel we have reached an impasse. It has become exceedingly dangerous and the obstacles the violence is creating will eventually make it impossible for us to continue our work and, quite frankly, I don’t know where to go from here. One thing I do know is that in order for our or anyone else’s efforts in southern Sudan to resume and have any hope or level of success, there must first be lasting peace. Unfortunately the privilege and greater burden of that seemingly impossible task is a responsibility that rests squarely on your shoulders and on that of the international community.

I am only one man, but I am an American and I am proud of this fact. I have every opportunity and privilege available to me in the world that life can afford and because of this I feel it is my duty as a citizen of our great nation to act on the behalf of the helpless and innocent people of southern Sudan, and to add my voice to their plea as a global citizen of the world.

I implore you Mr. President, that the Government of the United States of America:

• Commit the United States to lead an international effort to enforce the arrest warrant issued by the ICC in The Hague for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, and announce this strategy through a public statement before January 1, 2010.
• Commit to create, implement, and sign into law, the Southern Sudan Recovery Act of 2010 to disarm all warring factions within Sudan.
• Commit to the recovery and rehabilitation of all affected communities of this civil war, including Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the DR Congo, the CAR, and Chad.
• Insist and require a total observance and faithful implementation of all provisions set forth in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Accord by all warring factions.
• Insist and require fair and transparent referendum and census for national elections in 2010.
• Insist and require fair and transparent independence referendum in 2011.
• Insist and require fair and transparent sharing of all revenue generated by oil wealth needed by all areas in Sudan to rebuild.
• Ensure that all global partners remain vigilant and fully vested in the peace process in Sudan.
• Demand an absolute unconditional end to the genocidal violence in Sudan once and for all!

Mr. President, this is your “Moment of Promise.” I hope we, the United States of America, do not “squander this opportunity!” Lasting peace is Sudan’s only hope, and quite possibly, it is Africa’s last hope for Sudan!

As the former member of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Charlie Nesbit Wilson was quoted as saying: “We [screwed] up the end game. It would have been very easy and done for a minuscule amount of money. We should have done the basic things for a backward country that’s trying to come out of (a war) and have a reasonable hope of economic success.”

“This is a direct reference to when Charlie Wilson asked his Congressional colleagues to appropriate $1 million to build schools in Afghanistan. The request was dismissed -the same committee which had poured over $1 billion for military assistance to fight the Russians -would not offer 1/1000 of that to build schools. Mr. Wilson now believes that the United States’ failure to invest in Afghanistan’s recovery following the war led in large part to the ascension of the Taliban, who provided a refuge for Osama bin Ladin, who had fought with the Mujahideen against the Soviets, and Al Qaeda in the years leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

The following is a direct quote from Greg Mortenson, philanthropist and author of Three Cups of Tea: “Although it may seem kind of a waste of our resources to many Americans, we made a promise. When America cut funding to Afghanistan in the 1980’s, we basically abandoned the people who helped us overthrow the Soviets. I worry that history may repeat itself. We invaded, and within a year and a half ran off to Iraq - again we abandoned the people. To me this is our third - and final - try.”

We no longer can ignore the plight of southern Sudan, nor can we afford to let the country slip back into a morass of endless civil war, suffering and death. We simply cannot abandon them and ignore their cries. How quickly we forget not so long ago Sudan was a safe haven for terrorists such as Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The international community allowed radicalism to flourish and the end game was September 11th. Now an arrest warrant has been issued for the President of Sudan for crimes against humanity.

When is enough, enough? When will the international community honor the words, “Never Again?”

I have made a pledge to myself to create positive lasting change in the world that will continue to exist far beyond my lifetime. I have also made a personal promise to a friend and a community full of peaceful people who asked me to deliver a message to our great nation.

Please do not forget them. The people of Sudan are dying needlessly every day and they desperately need our help now more than ever!

Mr. President, war is the great scourge of our earth and a most shameful preoccupation of man… We cannot afford to allow history to repeat itself again; this may very well be a final opportunity for peace.

I hope for the sake of Sudan, for the sake of what is right and wrong in this world, for our very humanity, that we don’t “screw” this one up too!

Please lend the voice of our great nation to their plea. Insist that the world stand up, take notice, and help forge a lasting peace!

Help us create hope! And together we will shape the future for the children of southern Sudan.

My sincerest & warmest regards,

Donald Ray Dains
Co-Founder & Vice-President
Deng Ater Foundation - Lost Boys Schools for Sudan

cc:
Vice President Joe Biden
Secretary Hillary Clinton
General Scott Gration
Ambassador Susan Rice
Senator Jon Kyl
Senator John McCain
Congressman Raul Grijalva
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

• December 15, 2009 - Reply from The White House. [pdf]
• February 19, 2010 - Reply from The House of Representatives. [pdf]

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Interview - 96.1 KLPX FM: Schools for Sudan

Listen Now: Lifestyle Tucson - 92.1 KFMA & 96.1 KLPX

With: Stephanie Fries

Ari Date: July 19, 2009

“Our mission is to provide the opportunity of an education to disadvantaged children by building sustainable primary and secondary schools throughout southern Sudan.”

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‘Lost Boy’ Bringing Gift Of Hope To Native Land

Tucson Citizen

Building schools in Sudan is UA student’s mission

By: RENÉE SCHAFER HORTON

Issue Date: November 11, 2008

By day, Abraham Deng Ater is a University of Arizona graduate student, toiling toward his master’s degree in public health. By night, he’s a Costco employee, corralling shopping carts that are scattered across the darkened parking lot like spilled marbles.

In between, he’s thinking of southern Sudan’s children, who have a greater chance of dying from malaria than of learning to read.

Ater is one of Sudan’s Lost Boys, the estimated 27,000 males between the ages of 4 and 15 who were displaced by civil war that broke out in 1983 between the mostly Arab forces in north Sudan and the indigenous Africans in south Sudan. Ater came to Tucson when nearly 4,000 Lost Boys were rescued from refugee camps in 2001 and relocated in the U.S.

Now a lanky 29-year-old, Ater knows education equals hope, and he wants to bring that hope back to his native land through his Lost Boys Schools for Sudan project.

Just as when he was running from bloodthirsty militias or crossing crocodile-infested rivers to get to refugee camps, Ater feels he’s in a race against time to save what international experts term “the lost generation” - the hundreds of illiterate, post-war children in southern Sudan.

“They are willing to learn, but they have no resources,” Ater said of the children he saw last year on a trip to Sudan. “I feel I need to bring education to the country because there will be no leaders without it.”

Without leaders, southern Sudan may be usurped by northern Sudan - and its citizens subjugated - when the 2005 peace agreement that ended the civil war expires in January 2011, Ater said.

“There’s no infrastructure in the south right now - it’s been destroyed by two civil wars,” said Donald Dains, a UA Fine Arts alumnus and Ater’s partner in the schools project. “That’s part of why we feel it is so important to get schools built. If there’s no progress on the ground, then the people of the south will have nowhere to turn to except to the north.”

That is a scenario Ater will not let himself imagine. He and Dains founded the Deng Ater Foundation a year ago to raise funds to build three 20-room schools in rural villages of southern Sudan, each serving 900 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

Dains said they’ve developed an operations model that will result in each school becoming self-sustaining after three years. But to get started, they need $250,000, which would be used to build the first school in November 2009 and keep it running for three years as they build the next two schools.

So far, the nonprofit foundation has raised only $5,000, but Diane Dains, Donald’s wife and a member of the foundation, said she thinks Tucson’s generous hearts and open hands can rectify that.

“One wants to be a good citizen, but in the bigger picture, I think it is about being a global citizen,” Diane Dains said. “It’s hard for one person to do something like this. You need an army of people to help collectively. It’s helping an American citizen here to bring back hope to the children of his native country.”

Trek from Sudan starts at age 9

Deng Ater was only 4 when civil war broke out between the Arab government in northern Sudan and the indigenous tribal rebels in the south, and just 9 when his parents sent him walking barefoot, with other village boys, toward the Sudanese-Ethiopian border, telling him he was going to school.

It was a lie, one desperate parents told to save sons from certain death or militia conscription.

“When we left Sudan we are told we are going to school, not because of the war,” Ater recalled recently. “I ask my parents, ‘Where is the school?,’ and they said, ‘You’ll find it, just walk that way.’”

The school didn’t materialize, but the lie kept Ater and thousands of other Lost Boys alive. Ater spent 13 years in refugee camps in Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya, walking hundreds of miles between each camp. He was rescued in 2001 and relocated to Tucson, a 22-year-old who’d experienced more trauma than one life should hold. With help from refugee resettlement agencies, he got started on the education he’d been promised each time the Lost Boys were sent walking again toward another refugee camp.

He enrolled in Pima Community College and shortly thereafter got word through a friend in Kenya that his mother and sisters were still alive. (Ater’s father was killed fighting with the rebels and his older brother was killed by the northern Sudan militia, although he was not part of the rebel forces.) From that point forward, he planned to return home to visit her.

Ater graduated from Pima in 2004, then transferred to UA, where he received his bachelor’s in physiology in 2006. He worked about 30 hours a week at Costco while in school, which is where Dains met him one spring day in 2004.

“I was studying film at the UA and doing a black-and-white film project about the movement of bodies,” Dains said. “I saw Abraham pushing carts and said to my wife, ‘Well, he looks like an interesting guy.’ I immediately wanted to know what his story was, so I went up to him and told him about my film project.”

The three-minute film led to long conversations about the Lost Boys, shared meals and a deep, abiding friendship.

“I told him, if you ever do go back to Sudan, take me with you,” Dains said. “So, in 2007, he said he was ready and I said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Following his May 2006 UA graduation, Ater became a U.S. citizen. He worked full time at Costco for a year, saving money to go back to Sudan and find his mother.

In May 2007, he and Dains returned to the Kenyan refugee camp where Ater had last lived. They stayed with distant relatives and friends for a week before crossing the Sudan border and traveling to Duk County where Ater’s family used to live. They asked after his mother and people said they’d seen her, but could not point to her village. It turned out they didn’t need to.

“One day, with my relatives there, I just saw a lady walking by my relative’s home and somebody say, ‘Hey that’s your mom!’ and ‘Hey, that’s your son,’ and we started running to each other and grab each other and it just happened like that and it was really emotional,” Ater said.

The next day, they walked 30 miles to her village, past decimated communities full of impoverished, illiterate children.

“We had to walk like three hours to go there and I saw the kids,” he said. “They have nowhere to go and they don’t have education, so they were just playing with the mud.”

Focus on public health issues

That journey stuck with Ater and Dains. When they returned to Tucson, the Deng Ater Foundation was born. Dains took over the day-to-day business of the foundation, getting paperwork filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission and the Internal Revenue Service for nonprofit status, and building an extensive Web site. Ater returned to school, first as a non-degree-seeking student in public health and, this fall, getting accepted as a master’s candidate at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. His choice of study was determined by his Sudan trip.

“When I visited, I saw the need there,” Ater said. “These people are dying from simple diseases that are preventable and public health focuses on prevention, not treatment. I think if I get a degree in public health, I can go back and teach them and that is what I intend to do.”

Ater will get a jump-start on that in January when he and Dains hope to go to Sudan to do site surveys for the first school. While there, he’ll provide public health information on preventable diseases with the help of another UA student.

“Abraham and I are going to focus on cholera, malaria, HIV/AIDS and develop health education materials to educate the villagers on how to prevent these diseases,” said Holly Page, who will receive her master’s in public health in December. “The literacy rate is pretty low there, so we want to have pictures that we can leave behind so they can remember what we told them.”

Page learned about the Lost Boys Schools project when she attended a Vail fund-raising event earlier this month, hosted by Ben Astenius, owner of Man of the Soil Landscape Builders. The event raised about $1,300 from the 45 people in attendance.

“My wife is a co-worker of Deng’s and heard what he was trying to do,” Astenius said. “You just see the concern he has and after what he’s been through, he’s trying to save his people through education. How could you not get behind somebody like that?”

During the January trip, Ater will focus on public health projects and Dains will evaluate potential school-building sites, making sure they are free of land mines and have good soil. He’ll also identify the cost and availability of local building materials and water sources.

Ater knows his goal is large but said there is no choice.

“When we walk across the desert, people would help you if you fall behind,” he said, recalling the Lost Boy experience. “One day I fall behind and I was almost dead from dehydration, and there were people ahead of me that draw some water and bring it back to rescue me. When I am here, I keep that in mind when I think of the children suffering with no school. . . That is how most of us Lost Boys survived, by helping each other.” - Abraham Deng Ater

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Physiology Major Works to Build Schools in Sudan

U of A Department of Physiology

Abraham Deng Ater, Physiology Major, Works to Build Schools in Sudan

By: Author Unknown

Issue Date: November 04, 2008

Abraham Deng Ater, who received his B.S. in Health Sciences degree with a major in Physiology, recently has been in the news for his work to build schools in the Sudan.

Upon his graduation in May of 2006 he was awarded the Physiology Department’s Wildcat Award for having the persistence to succeed in the face of great adversity and in December of 2006 Abraham proudly became a US citizen. In the fall of 2008, Abraham was accepted into the College of Public Heath and is pursuing his Masters of Public Health Degree.

An online “UA News” release on October 28, 2008 describes Abraham’s work, with help from two other UA alumni, to establish a foundation that is raising money to build three schools in his native Sudan. Student, Alumni Working to Build Schools in Sudan This website also provides links to websites for the Deng Ater Foundation - Lost Boys Schools for Sudan and to a video interview and audio PodCast with Abraham in which he describes his Schools for Sudan project.

Abraham was among a large group of young boys, known as the “Lost Boys,” who fled their African country of Sudan in 1987 when it was torn by civil war. Some boys were as young as five when their journey began. Now they say they were not lost, just displaced, traveling in large groups from the Sudan to Ethiopia, then to a refugee camp in Kenya. In the spring of 2001, Abraham was among the fortunate ones to receive refugee status and was resettled in Tucson.

In 2006, Abraham shared with us his “Journey of a Lifetime;” Nineteen years ago we fled Sudan in search of refuge and education, for we were deprived the right to attend school in our own country. We traveled for years and over 1000 miles from village to village, city to city, and country to country, barefooted and in fear of being enslaved or killed. Thousands among us died of starvation or animal attacks, thus I felt fortunate to end up here in this country, especially at the UA. In every city or every country where we took refuge, we had to build a school the next morning after we arrived and when asked why? we replied, “Education is my mother and father” and when asked where is your mother and father? we said the same thing. [The boys all thought their parents had died so all they had in the world was education, and that it would help them.] Upon my arrival in this country in 2001, I tried to absorb as much education as possible, but my inner emotional stress never let up on me once more. Therefore, I had to work hard to support myself and my relatives that I left behind and go to school at the same time to accomplish that goal.

Abraham returned to his native Sudan in 2007 to search for his family. There he was reunited with his mother and two sisters, but his father and brother both died in the war. Abraham found the infrastructure in the country’s southern region almost completely dismantled due to civil wars and poverty. The educational system in this region is particularly impoverished with the lowest rate worldwide of students completing primary school (according to a UNICEF report). Abraham and two of his friends, Donald Ray Dains and Diane Marie Dains, both 2004 College of Fine Arts graduates and honors students, have established the nonprofit Deng Ater Foundation - Lost Boys Schools for Sudan. The goal of the foundation is to raise funds to build three primary and secondary schools in southern Sudan. To build the first school, the foundation needs at least $80,000. The foundation’s impressive website describes fund raising efforts and additional goals for programs that will help to shape the future for the children of Southern Sudan.

Abraham Deng Ater’s “Journey of a Lifetime,” which is based on his idea of pursuing an education, is now being extended to help his native country’s children receive their education. And he is pursuing this new goal with the spirit that won him the Physiology Wildcat Senior Award in 2006, a spirit characterized by perseverance, resiliency, and a positive attitude in striving to overcome obstacles and hardships.

Arizona Health Sciences Center
1501 N. Campbell, Rm. 4104
PO Box 245051
Tucson, AZ 85724
(520) 626-6511

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Multimedia Video: Lost Boys Schools for Sudan

UA News

UA News Interview of Abraham Deng Ater, UA graduate student from Southern Sudan and Donny Ray Dains, UA Honors graduate, start foundation to build schools…

Watch Now: Multimedia Video: Lost Boys Schools for Sudan

Please do a search on UA News page: Schools for Sudan - Video

By: Will Holst, University Communications

Issue date: October 31, 2008

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Interview of U of A Graduate Student from Sudan

UA News

Arizona PodCats Interview with Abraham Deng Ater, UA graduate student from Southern Sudan

Listen Now: PodCast: Lost Boys Schools for Sudan

Please do a search on UA News page: Interview with Abraham Deng Ater, UA graduate student from Sudan

By: Jeff Harrison, University Communications

Issue date: October 30, 2008

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Student Alumni Working to Build Schools in Sudan

UA News

Abraham Deng Ater, with help from two UA alumni, established a foundation and is currently raising money to try and build three schools in his native Sudan.

By: La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications

Issue Date: October 27, 2008

Abraham Deng Ater returned to his native Sudan – Africa’s largest country – last year in search of his family and found the infrastructure in the country’s southern region almost completely dismantled.

It was years after the end of the 22-year-long Second Sudanese Civil War. Abandoned and ruined tanks, trucks and cars still littered the terrain. Crippled buildings, toppled bridges and destroyed roadways were commonplace as were fields of deserted, yet fertile land that once served as the harvesting bed for the families that had long lived there.

It was then that Ater – a University of Arizona graduate student who was among more than 25,000 estimated “Lost Boys” to flee the country between 1983 and 2005 – decided to help in the reconstruction effort by raising money to build schools there.

One of the most compelling drivers in his decision, he said, were the orphans.

“They had no where to go,” said Ater, now a UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health student.

Ater recalled walking the streets and dirt roads of his village, sometimes three hours to reach the rural areas. Along the way, he met children who had no families, no homes and no schools. Despite their tremendous loss, the children had an obvious and undeniable desire to learn.

This drove Ater and two of his friends, Donald Ray Dains and Diane Marie Dains – both 2004 College of Fine Arts graduates and honors students – to establish the nonprofit Deng Ater Foundation – Lost Boys Schools for Sudan.

Together, they are raising funds to build three primary and secondary schools in southern Sudan, namely in Mareng, Padiet and Fayuel.

“Education can provide for health care, the children can teach the parents,” Ater said. “If you can teach one child, that child can teach other people. We’re trying to focus on the long term.”

The Grand Plans

Currently, the educational system in Sudan is bleak. A World Bank Development Indicators report estimates that the literacy rate in northern Sudan is about 58 percent while it is around 33 percent in southern Sudan. Comparatively, the estimated literacy rate in the United States is 99 percent.

To build the first school, the foundation needs at least $80,000. Ater and the Dains scheduled a Nov. 1 charity dinner to be held at the Vail Mining Company in Vail to try and raise $20,000 toward the cost.

Donald Ray Dains, who has a background in construction, said he devoted himself to the project because of Ater and also because he did not leave Sudan last year unchanged.

“Getting to know Abraham over the years, I’ve come to love him like a brother,” said Dains, also the foundation’s vice president.

“He’s an amazing friend and has an amazing spirit that moved me. And when I saw the great need, I was compelled to do something.”

The foundation’s group hopes to build one school each year. Each school will serve a student population of about 900. The hope is to turn the schools over to the government within three years of their opening.

For now, Ater and Dains intend to visit Sudan at the end of the year to meet with the southern Sudanese government, local leaders and the archbishop of the Episcopal church of southern Sudan. They also plan to register their foundation with the government and begin searching for a site for the first school.

“We have a lot of support from the government,” Ater said, adding that the group wants construction to begin toward the end of next year. “But they just don’t have the resources to do it. But we are willing to do it.”

Another intention is to involve the adults not only in the building process, but also in their own education, specifically related to health care issues and ways to build small businesses.

Ater’s Story

Ater was a 4-year-old when the civil war broke out between mostly Christian rebels from the south and the mostly Muslim government in the north. He was 9 years old when his family sent him away with other boys for safety.

The group spent about four years trudging through the deserts, mounts and rivers of the southern and eastern regions of Africa in search of food and safety.

Estimates indicate that upwards from than 3 million people were killed during the war, which predated the Darfur conflict with millions more displaced.

Eventually, Ater settled at the Kakuma Refugee Camp located in Kenya and was eventually sent to Tucson, Ariz.

After returning to Sudan with Donald Ray Dains last year, Ater reunited with his mother and two sisters. His father and brother both died in the war.

But the lives lost are only part of a post-war effect. Some of the most pervasive problems that exist in Sudan in addition to a defunct education system include unemployment, poverty and health care concerns.

During their trip, Ater and Dains found themselves on a flight with a very ill boy. The captain asked if anyone had medical experience and would tend to the boy. Dains, who has a military background, volunteered. But before the plane could lift off the ground, the young boy had died from appendicitis.

“I was upset that this could be going on,” Dains said. “But this kind of thing goes on all the time. Young lives seem to begin and end without notice.”

So immense was the emotional response to what they experienced and saw in Sudan that Ater and Dains established the foundation two months after they returned to Tucson.

“We took six duffel bags with us and it made people feel good but we were just talking about what do we could do, and we wanted to do more,” said Dains, adding that the bags contained clothing, toys and books.

“The bottom line is that people are still starving and dying from simple, treatable diseases,” he said. “People are suffering to get by day after day.”

Ater said he does not want to see his people continue to suffer, reflecting on his own life as something that should be shared.

It was about six years ago that Ater and the Dains met in a Costco parking lot in Tucson.

“I saw him at Costco pulling cars in the parking lot and I said to Diane, my wife, ‘That’s an interesting looking character,’” Dains said, “‘I wonder what his story is?’”

After speaking briefly with Ater, Dains volunteered to produce a video about his life and help him begin writing a book. The two have completed a series of edits and plan to send it to a publisher.

“Abraham’s entire life’s journey has been based on the idea that he would pursue an education,” Donald Ray Dains said. “Of all the boys who did survive and get out of the refugee camp, that’s the one thing that keeps you alive – your education.”

Ater began his studies at Pima Community College in 2002 and also began working at Costco full-time. Eventually he transferred to the UA where, in 2006, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physiology – the same year he became a U.S. citizen.

Now, Ater is a first-year master’s UA student who spends his evenings and downtown spending time on his foundation work in addition to the 32 hours a week he puts in at Costco.

Ater said that while he has become accustomed to “this life” of round the clock electricity, running water, indoor plumbing and an abundance of food, it pains him to know that his people are not privy to the same.

During the years he spent running, Ater said: “We had no one, and everywhere we went we could start a school. We said that education is our father and our mother. There were no adults, just boys. We all thought our parents had died so we thought all we had in the world was education, and that it would help us.”

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Please, take the first step, create hope & DONATE NOW!

PSA - 690 AM KVOI: Deng Ater Foundation

Listen Now: PSA - 690 AM KVOI The Voice Of Freedom

By: Abraham Deng Ater

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Architects Without Borders: Village by Village

Village by Village – Project Fundraiser - October 2nd

Save the date for our upcoming Happy Hour fundraising event! It will be at Belt Collins (1925 Post Alley) at 6pm – on their rooftop deck, if weather allows. Light refreshments and entertainment to be provided. The Ghana team has been researching appropriate building technologies and environmental responses to deal with erosion control in the village of Gboloo Kofi, and two AWB volunteers will be traveling to Ghana late October to implement some of these findings, as well as assess conditions for potential future AWB design projects with Village by Village.

This research will also benefit two other projects we are gearing up on in Africa – Grafton, Sierre Leone Community Buildings with All as One and the Lost Boys School Schools for Sudan compound with the Deng Ater Foundation. Come to the fundraiser for more information on these two projects as well.

Our goal is to raise $2000, which will be used to help design and build a prototype building. Any level of donation will be greatly appreciated. And if you can’t make it to the event, but still want to give please donate here: