Dr. Lyndall Hare, consultant, works with Patricia to shape future Mothering Across Continents strategies. Born, raised and having served as a community organizer in South Africa, Lyndall has deep personal knowledge of conflict resolution and peace building initiatives that shaped the modern history of the country. Lyndall, a gerontologist, is a case manager/social worker for the YWCA’s Women in Transition program. She also is owner/CEO of ElderCare Coaching & Consulting, Inc.  She authored In the Belly of the Beast: South African Women’s Lives of Activism, Exile, and Aging (2004). Lyndall has a Ph.D., Gerontological Studies, Union Institute & University, and a degree in social work from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Lyndall travels from the Charlotte, NC, area.

Mary Waller provides communications support for Mothering Across Continents. She worked for 19 years for a Fortune 50 company before forming her own general PR and communications firm specializing in media relations, corporate messaging, crisis communications, executive coaching and writing/editing. In addition to her Mothering Across Continents activities, Mary serves as corporate communications director for the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National MS Society. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Brown University. Mary travels out of Charlotte, NC.

Mentoring Mwiko
Jerri Hatch, traveling out of the Washington, DC area, describes herself as an environmentalist with a love for animals, the outdoors and travel. In January 2009, her passion for travel took her to Rwanda, Kenya and Zanzibar. While in Rwanda, she asked to visit a "small village school." Her travel agent sent her to Mwiko School, which serves 700 children with inadequate teaching materials, school supplies, books, pencils or blackboards. The teachers have little, if any, training. Jerry spent more than a year working with Mothering Across Continents, other women and outside advisors to shape her adopt-a-school effort called “Mentoring Mwiko: a program of education, nutrition and joy for a school in Rwanda.” Phase one of the project officially launches in June 2010 and includes English language training for teachers, meals and sustainable agriculture, and arts empowerment. Fundraising currently is under way.

Raising Sudan

Karen Puckett, Salisbury, NC (left) and Judy Maves, Atlanta, GA (right) traveled to a heavily guarded Sudan in February 2009 on a mission to look for opportunities to build a school in the home boma of Lost Boy Ngor Kur Mayol.
 
Karen, upon returning to the US, formed a non-profit called Sudan Rowan and ultimately connected with Mothering Across Continents, which was working with another Lost Boy, Lubo “James” Mijak, who wants to return to the Sudan and build a school. Karen, a public school media center specialist who believes in the power of education to develop leaders, now is working to build the Raising Sudan project. Both Lubo and Ngor are from one of the most under-served regions in the world. Lubo’s village, in Nyarweng, has no primary school and 90 pecent of adults cannot read. Karen hopes to build, equip and staff two schools in 2010 with more to follow. It’s taken more than two years to figure out how to make this dream happen, but everyone agrees – parents, community elders and Sudanese officials – the top priority is education. Education is life-changing.

Lubo “James” Mijak is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan because he spent most of his lifetime in refugee camps . . . He was only 8 years old when his village was attacked by the Sudan government militia. He was tending cattle in a cattle camp about three hours from his home. After killing everyone in the village and destroying all the homes, the militia attacked the cattle camp.

The boys escaped and walked along the river facing crocodiles, lions and starvation until they reached Ethiopia, where they were welcomed by the United Nations, and stayed until 1991. They later moved to a displacement camp in Sudan; but when they were attacked by the Khartoum government, they fled to a refugee camp in Kenya where they lived on one meal a day and attended school.

Today, Lubo is committed to educating leaders:  “Today, especially in Africa, the world is in great need of educated leaders who can promote peace and security, whereby no one will worry about his safety. The world of today needs good, educated leaders who promote development of hospitals, roads, and schools.  My experiences have taught me a lot about bad leadership. But I have learned a lot with the chance to be in the U.S., and see many examples of good leadership, and see that it’s the opportunity to be educated that creates an environment for good leaders to grow up in.

My project is called “Raising Sudan,” and it involves raising enough money to build multiple schools in southern Sudan, starting with a school in my home village – this year.

The school would serve 300+ children, including four classrooms, and a water source, and learning kits, and a building for visiting teachers and Lost Boys like me who can go and support the school.

I’m leading this effort myself because the need for schools in southern Sudan is so great that in villages like mine – if we don’t take responsibility for ourselves – it will be a long time before we get the education that is so needed.”

Ngor Kur Mayol is another of the 3,800 lost boys of Sudan now living in America. He was brought to Atlanta, GA in 2001 as an unaccompanied minor by the Lutheran ministry of Georgia. He believes moving to the US was a gift from God, positioning the Lost Boys to get educations and to help rebuild southern Sudan. Mayol and several friends returned to south Sudan in 2006 to visit, assess needs and determine how they could help. In his words:
“This is what we did not find in Pariang: clean water available for drinking, cooking and hygiene, sufficient clinics equipped to serve the sick and offer inoculations, and a properly staffed school with the supplies needed to educate the children.  In fact, the whole area of Pariang suffers from three major issues:  water, medical care and educational needs.  People like me need to set up a way to help these people.  We began searching for a partner in America who could fund us, who could help us create a partnership between the people here in the US and our people back home in Pariang.”

Mayol became involved with Karen Puckett’s non-profit, Sudan Rowan Inc., and now works with Mothering Across Continents. On a trip to Sudan in 2009 it became abundantly clear that education and medical facilities still are critical needs. Mayol is passionate that children – and adults – learn to read so they can vote.