Picture an End to Global Poverty

The Jubilee Network is running a campaign called "Picture an End to Global Poverty." The idea is write a sign that says "Picture an end to global proverty, cancel debt, provide more and better aid" and then take a picture of yourself, your friends, your family, your class, etc. with that sign, send it in to the website, and the network will add it to their photo stream.

ASAH's good friend John Dau is in one of the photos with his book God Grew Tired of Us.

Building Schools in Southern Sudan

This story highlights the efforts to build schools and tremendous need for schools in southern Sudan. We just need to learn more about how they actually built these structures.

Salva Dut, Water for Sudan

One of the many exceptional people I met in Rochester at the first meeting of the Hope of Sudan Alliance was Salva Dut, founder of Water for Sudan. A bit of his story gets told in the documentary Faces of Sudan, but a Rochester film maker has completed a documentary called "Just Add Water."



The production company's website has lots of great information, as does Salva's website, Water for Sudan.

Hope of Sudan Alliance

I was in Rochester New York for the weekend (Sept. 20-21) attending the first meeting of what is now an Alliance of Sudanese Foundations. The group is tentatively called "Hope of Sudan: Alliance of International Sudanese Foundations." The local news wrote up and filmed a good story.

More on this weekend later. The building committee is also heading to Sudan tomorrow morning; I'll post photos and/or give updates when I can.

Joseph back on the speaking circuit

Joseph made his first presentation of the fall at Fargo-Moorhead's Unitarian Universalist Church. Joseph made his first real public presentation at this church one year ago. He has accomplished a lot in 12 months. Last year, he struggled to get through the presentation, unprepared for the emotional strain of telling about his life in Sudan. This year, he spoke with confidence and humor, passion when appropriate.

In those twelve months, he has made numerous presentations, traveled to Sudan, graduated from NDSU, published a book, been featured in a documentary (in progress), continued to be a guardian to his younger siblings and parent to his children. This year should be similarly busy: he is going back to Sudan with two board members, the documentary will premier November 9, he will have many speaking engagements, he will be busy fund raising, and with any luck, we will break ground on a boarding school in his village.

Rough cut audio done!

Matt M (also known as nightmare) shared a rough cut of the documentary with the rest of the team. He pulled out interviews and Joseph's narration from our 30 hours of footage. I had forgotten how articulate the Director at Kakuma was, and the Duk County commission got really impassioned as he spoke about the challenges facing orphans in Duk County, Sudan.

The doc still needs lots of work, but Matt has done a great job logging all the footage and taking this first big step towards pullig things together.