South Sudan Focuses on Education for Next Generation

|TOP|Following a bloody war in south Sudan, the residents are currently in the process of rebuilding and finding back their normal life.

With education being on their top priority list, The Voice of The Martyrs ministries in Canada is helping them educate the next generation by bringing old schools back from ashes.

Tom Zurowski, Director of the U.S.-based Global Response Network, said, "When I first came, [to] southern Sudan, we would go from village to village and ask people, what is your greatest need? And they told us, ‘The greatest need that we have is education. And not just education but Christian education’.”

For 20 years, the Southern Sudan suffered under the ravages of civil war for 20 years as they resisted the brutal ethnic and religious genocide by the Khartoum government in the north; it claimed over 2 million lives.
The majority of those killed were Christians in Sudan’s south.

|AD|Back in 2001, Islamic government soldiers left the Nugent Christian Secondary School in ruins before fleeing the area. The school, which was founded by British missionaries in 1929, was at one time home to 2,500 students, educating future pastors, bishops, government leaders and intellectuals.

Dickson Mutiso, the Field Director for the Nugent School, said, "We want to see, one day, in the future, some great women and men of God coming out of the Nugent Secondary School, who are going out there to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ; to be very good and inspired leaders of this nation in future generations.”

18-year-old Joseph Yugu, a student at the Nugent School, wants to be a journalist. He said, "I like school because when I'm finished [with] my school I will get a job. I will help the people."

Tom Zurowski said, “People who have achieved any kind of academic, higher academic levels have actually left the country. They have gone to places like Britain, or Canada or the United States to further their education. But then, what happens is, many of them stay there. So we find ourselves with a very small pool of qualified people who can actually teach these students.”

Mutiso said, “This is the right time for them to come back home and try to help these children, who are very needy, and who have been neglected for a long time during the war.”

The main school building has been repaired, including some buildings that will house the teachers in the school. The chapel is in the process of being restored.