JHS 202 students and their teacher, Michelle Brier, far right, gathered in the school’s library Friday to present a check to Water for South Sudan. Photo by Anna Gustafson
When students at JHS 202 in Ozone Park read “A Long Walk to Water,” which tells the stories of two 11-year-olds striving to survive while facing some of humanity’s darkest times in Sudan, they uniformly had an immediate reaction: How do we help?
Salva Dut was 11 years old when he had to flee his home in southern Sudan in 1985 and walk hundreds of miles to a refugee camp. Several years later, he returned home to lead about 1,500 children from a country that had exploded into violence and chaos. After moving to the United States in 1996, Dut founded a nonprofit, Water for South Sudan, that builds wells in remote areas of the country. Photo courtesy Ken Riemer Productions
That question was quickly answered with a resounding call for action, and the then sixth-grade students decided to raise money to give to Water for South Sudan, a nonprofit run by Salva Dut, whose story of perseverance and heroism inspired author Linda Sue Park’s best-selling “A Long Walk to Water.” The book alternately tells the stories of two main characters – one which begins in 1985 and is based upon the life of Dut, who, as an 11-year-old living during a civil war that lasted for two decades and killed close to two million people, was one of thousands of children who fled their homes in Sudan, traveling long distances through often hostile territory, to escape to refugee camps in neighboring countries. These children became known as “the lost boys of Sudan.”
The book’s other story line takes place in 2008 and revolves around an 11-year-old girl, Nya, who spends eight hours a day walking to and from a pond to fetch water.
“In August 2011, I read this book, and I was really blown away by the message – and I knew it was a book that could connect children to the challenges of the world without scaring them,” said Michelle Brier, a sixth grade language arts and social studies teacher at JHS 202. “I didn’t want to tell them to build a well – I wanted it to come from them. Would they be moved to action? Well, they were – and almost immediately.”
Beginning in the fall of 2011, Brier’s sixth grade students launched their project, “One Drop at a Time,” to raise money for Dut’s nonprofit, which has gone on to build hundreds of wells in areas of Sudan that have never before had direct access to clean drinking water. This, Dut has pointed out, not only benefits the health of the residents but prompts widespread social and economic change, including providing a chance for girls to go to school because they no longer need to spend much of their day trekking to get water for their families.
For the next three years, the 202 students worked diligently, doing everything from spearheading bake sales to encouraging students throughout the school to donate money. And, last Friday, their efforts paid off: They got to present, via Skype, a check for about $5,000 to Water for South Sudan – and, in what was a surprise to the school’s administrators, teachers, and students, Dut was present on the video call, eliciting gasps and cheers from the pupils.
Residents in the South Sudan village of Abilnyang once relied on water from a murky swamp, pictured here, as their primary source of water – which changed in 2008, when the nonprofit Water for South Sudan led efforts to drill a 260-foot-deep bore-hole well, providing the area’s more than 1,600 residents with safe drinking water. JHS 202 students in Ozone Park recently donated $5,000 to this nonprofit, which will allow it to build a similar well in another rural part of the country. Photo courtesy Ken Riemer Productions
“Your impact is so great,” Dut told the students who gathered in their school’s library, a room that, with its blue walls and floor, seemed to coincide with the event’s emphasis on water. “That’s what keeps moving me, even though life can be difficult.”
Dut lived in an Ethiopian camp for years before, as a teenger, leading 1,500 other “lost boys” hundreds of miles through the southern Sudan desert to another refugee camp, this one across the country’s southeastern border in Kenya.
He went on to be relocated to the United States in 1996, after which he launched his nonprofit – which has landed international acclaim for its efforts to promote a sustainable economy and education in South Sudan, which gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 and, as of last December, has once again erupted into violence, including mass murders, following a nine-year stretch of relative peace after the civil war. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned last month that by the end of the year, half the country’s 12 million people could be fleeing their homeland, starving, or dead.
For the students at JHS 202, the book inspired by Dut’s life hit them hard, with many of them saying it will inspire them to strive to better the international community for years to come.
JHS 202 eighth grade students Kelly Nguyen, Sadia Rahman, and Anika Khan stand with the book, ” A Long Walk to Water,” that inspired them to raise thousands of dollars for a nonprofit that will build a well in South Sudan. Photo by Anna Gustafson
“I started tearing up reading it – you can’t read it and not do anything about it,” said Ashley Samwaru, a graduating eighth grade student.
Fellow eighth-graders Afsana Ahmed and Sehrish Malik agreed, with Afsana saying that she and her peers “all thought we have to help,” and Sehrish emphasizing that “we thought it was inhumane to know people are suffering and not do anything about it.”
“We had to help,” Sehrish said in a sentiment that was echoed time and again by the students.
Their efforts to raise money for a well – which will be able to be built with the $5,000 and will also be named after JHS 202 – were received well throughout the school community, with everyone from the school’s principal, William Fitzgerald, to students who had never read the book supporting the fundraising drive.
“These kids have done amazing work,” Fitzgerald said.
Marie Conti, an administrator for Water for South Sudan, which is based in Rochester, New York, agreed.
“Thank you so much,” she said during Friday’s call. “You make a difference in the world.”
By Anna Gustafson
