New educational initiative launched in South Sudan

June 13, 2006 — This is to inform all the Sudanese and their friends that we have started a new educational initiative called New Sudan Education Initiative. This initiative focuses on mobilizing the Sudanese Diaspora to bring the gift of Education to Sudan. It will specifically focus on Secondary Education. The goal of the program is to build up to 20 secondary schools across South Sudan and other marginalized areas in ten years or less.

NESEI is organizing a high-powered, dynamic, and effective South Sudanese Diaspora Organization that is mobilizing people in 32 cities across the United States, and also in cities in the U.K., Australia and Canada to work in Unison to bring education to South Sudan. NESEI works with all of Sudan’s Diaspora groups in addition to support networks of volunteers and friends and experts in international development from 4 continents. This alliance of motivated people provides a dynamic pool for ideas, resources, and skills, which provide NESEI with the most affective project implementation capabilities both in and out of Sudan.

Mission

The New Sudan Education Initiative is a partnership between Southern Sudanese and a global network of friends, who are uniting the Diaspora to bring the gift of education home to Sudan to ensure a lasting peace and to promote prosperity, gender equality, and self-reliance through holistic education.

Secondary school education according to Southern Sudanese Government officials and international NGO directors is the ‘black hole’ of education development policy in Southern Sudan today. You cannot run a country economically, politically or socially on an eighth grade education. No one else is doing this work on such a large-scale and this is why we choose to dedicate our energies to spear heading secondary education in South Sudan. We have the power and resources as members of the Sudanese Diaspora to fundamentally transform Sudan’s education system, and thus having a major impact on the future citizens and leaders of Sudan.

The organization is legally registered with the Government of South Sudan (GOSS/SSRRC) and the United States Government and also with OCHA UN agency. We have realized the energy of the Sudanese Diaspora but we are losing out by not using this potential for the national benefit. We know all Sudanese communities have small projects some are village based organizations and some are county based. We are not trying to take away those efforts but for us to qualify for large grants and to make a great impact in the development of our country in the shortest time possible, we must unite together and support large scale development projects like NESEI. NESEI will be organizing large national events for Sudanese in Diaspora for fundraising purposes and for the purpose of uniting our people and mobilizing them to realize their potential.

This summer we are organizing our first national meeting in USA at George Washington University Starting August 3rd through the 4th. People who can help in the board development and strategic planning are invited to share their expertise with other experts. If you are interested you should contact us before the end of June 2006. Visit our website www.nesei.org for more information.

I am inviting all the South Sudanese across America and other countries to join our network and see how they can help in this effort. We have identified 32 cities across the U.S where Sudanese are residents and we have visited all the New England States and our committees are up and running. We will identify the key people to organize the communities in those cities that we cannot visit and we will feed them with information.

It is the responsibility of all the Sudanese to come together and use the generosity of our friends in the West for the benefit of our people. We must start large scale projects to quickly help our people. Small projects do not get enough funds and are not sustainable and I think this is the time to start focusing on national development. GOSS can not do all the development efficiently and effectively alone, the civil society must help and this is one may we can make a great difference.

If you want to get involve, please contact Professor Robert Lair at [email protected], Lauren Servin at [email protected], Abraham Awolich at [email protected], and Atem Deng at [email protected] For any questions, please send us an email and tell us the city of your residence and your information will be protected.

For the webmaster, would you please add our link to your links at www.nesei.org.

Thank you all

Abraham Awolich