For the past six years, Colorado Academy’s Middle School has put on bake sales and other fundraisers – cobbling together enough money to pay the tuition for a young girl in Kenya to escape the refugee camps and go to school.

 

The student is Aguil Luag. She attends Roots Academy in Nakuru, Kenya, and she is the top student in her class. Once confined to the brutal life in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Luag now says her plan after Roots Academy is to attend high school and then one day become a medical doctor.  Luag is one of more than 60 children whose education is supported by a Denver non-profit organization, Seeds of South Sudan.  CA students fund Luag’s schooling, providing enough money to send her to school and purchase her school supplies. In return, students receive photos, letters, and even Luag’s report cards, including this letter received this week: 

 

 

A flip through the chronology of photographs is evidence of this child’s transformation.  Says CA senior Christina Bargelt, who was part of the effort during her Middle School years, “Just seeing her picture and hearing of her success brought me to tears. …CA has been supporting Luag’s education for as long as I have attended school here. I love that even though Luag and I live on different continents and in completely different worlds, we have simultaneously been pursuing our education,” says Bargelt.  “I feel such a sense of pride that CA has been so influential in the life of an educated, modern, young woman in Africa who has the tools to provide for herself and for the future of her country.”

 

Bargelt and others took part in CA’s effort through the Middle School CASA Club (CA Social Activism). Science teacher Sue Counterman sponsors the club, and students frequently marvel at her own activism. They recall how she takes students to the Darfur Forum at the University of Denver to learn about human rights topics, how she helps lead the annual Global Water Challenge to teach students about water issues in developing nations, and how she volunteers for the Seeds of South Sudan.

 

The Seeds of South Sudan organization was founded in Denver by Lost Boy, Arok Garang.  Garang says his vision is to educate 100 children who have survived the South Sudan genocide like he did.  He, too, was given the opportunity to escape the hardships of the Kakuma Refugee Camp and come to the U.S.

 

The Kakuma Camp, northwestern Kenya, has nearly 180,000 refugees that have been forcibly displaced by war or persecution. Unless they have help, refugees are confined to the camp and can’t seek either employment or education. Those sponsored by Denver’s Seeds of South Sudan organization are relocated to the Roots Academy boarding school and area high schools in Nakuru, Kenya to transform their lives. Seeds of South Sudan has enrolled at least 56 children, including Luag, in school programs. The organization is also celebrating the first sponsored student who has graduated from high school and qualified and applied for a college scholarship with the World University Service of Canada.