Larry Duffee – Why "Tools for the Sudan" is important !
Larry has offered to write this week why this project is important – an exclusive for Region One.
" The genesis of the project was the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan to South Sudan around the time of the referendum and independence in 2011. An estimated one and a half-million people with historic familial ties to the South were living in Sudan. Most had moved there during the decades of war to escape the violence in the South. Some people were second and third generation living in the north. But the government of Sudan promised to revoke all the rights of citizenship of southerners living in the north after independence and so most people who could return south did so.
"The people who returned to the South were often simply dumped on vacant ground with all of their belongings and told to make a new life. In Unity State, one of the states of South Sudan, over seventy-thousand returnees arrived in the early months of 2011. Most were resettled where possible near to where their families came from originally. But these were people who had lived mainly in and around Khartoum, a huge metropolitan city. The returnees were now expected to make their own shelter and grow their own food. Imagine being ripped from your life, transported hundreds of miles away to a strange country and told you were now responsible for your own survival!
Besides the obvious shock at having to learn an entirely new set of life-skills, one thing which most returnees lacked was access to the tools which would enable them to begin a new life. Some, who live near the Bahr al-Arab River or one of the many lakes, want to fish. Most though will try and till the rich, black-cotton soil to grow sorghum and maize and other food-crops.
Access to cash to purchase tools is difficult to come by, especially for families who probably had to pay everything they had just to move to the South. By helping these families purchase equipment and tools we are helping them to become self-sustaining. Fishermen need nets and hooks, while farmers need hoes, pangas (machetes), shovels and rakes. Virtually all farming is done by hand and having access to tools is critical for families to survive.
Contributions will be collected in the US and sent through the Province of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan to the Area Diocese of Bentiu which covers Unity State. The Rt. Rev. John Gattek, Area Bishop of Bentiu, will then supervise the purchase and distribution of tools to needy families and provide reports of how the tools are making an impact.
Thank you for your support of the people of South Sudan.