africa

From the Champlain College Website:

John Bul Dau, recently named one of America's "Most Caring People," will be guest speaker at Champlain College's Martin Luther King Day observance on Monday, Jan. 18,  at 6 p.m. in Argosy Gymnasium in the IDX Student Life Center.

One of the storied "Lost Boys of Sudan," Dau is featured in Christopher Quinn's award-winning documentary, God Grew Tired of Us. Born in war-torn Sudan, Dau is one of 27,000 boys driven from their villages when the northern Arab government attacked the ethnic minority population of Southern Sudan in 1987. For the next five years, Dau led groups of displaced boys across Sudan for hundreds of miles facing starvation, disease, and violence. In 1992, he was placed in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya where he learned his ABCs and 123's at the age of 17. In 2001, Dau was selected to immigrate to the United States and settled in Syracuse, NY.

Since then, through his John Dau Sudan Foundation, Dau has raised $700,000 and returned to open a clinic in Southern Sudan, which has provided care for more than 25,000 patients, most of whom had never seen a doctor before.

Mohamed Abdi, President of the Somali Bantu Association of Vermont and Abdullahi Hassan, both Burlington School District Liasons for Bi-lingual and Bi cultural Home School, present the Somali Bantu historical and cultural background, their educational and other experiences here in Vermont. A presentation of the Cultural Diversity Series of the Diversity and Equity Office of the Burlington School district and Fletcher Free Library.