Schoolgirls waiting for their underwear.
Girls receiving their underwear.
Can you imagine wearing your school uniform skirt with no underwear? How can you stick a pad to your underwear if there’s no underwear to stick it to? Little things like this can impede a girl’s education, and we’re grateful to Franco for making sure everyone has a chance for education in this part of South Sudan.
Your blogger asked Franco if girls missed school when they didn’t have Always sanitary pads (a favorite brand, and often referred to euphemistically by its brand name), and whether they could get any locally. As you can see from the bag, these pads came from CVS. He replied: “Girls miss school when they don’t have pads. Many girls in Wunlang School do not have underwears too. The closest markets to buy pads are in Aweil market or Wanyjok market. This year we have 84 girls who need pads, but next year the numbers will increase. . . . It is time now for someone to have a store to sell pads in Wunlang.”
Relying on visitors to bring them is not a sustainable plan. In our model of encouraging local enterprise, we hope to encourage an entrepreneur to open such a business It’s realistic to expect that a local retailer can get a supply — they’re made in China, and the pipeline of goods from China to Africa is wide open. Here’s hoping we can encourage, through sometime simple like pads, even more education and opportunity in a remote part of South Sudan.
Some of the 750 students enrolled in Wunlang School.
We will keep advocating for the Wunlang students.
Here we have four young ladies who don’t have to walk far distances for dirty water.
I don’t know if they are going to school, but their chances, because they are using less time and energy to fill and carry those jerrycans, are greater.
Franco has also planted 13 mango trees!
Here is a mango sapling, encircled by a fence of sticks, planted near one of the center’s meeting rooms.
And here is one planted outside a building that is used as a guest house and as a storage shed for peanuts.
A place of clean water, a place where there will be shade and mangoes . .. thanks to all those who have helped create this oasis in a remote part of South Sudan.If you can’t feed 100 people, then feed just one. — Mother Teresa
Many questions remain about South Sudan’s political and economic future. On the one hand, there has been no recent upsurge of violence. It was reported that New Year’s Eve was celebrated in Juba without any gunfire. On the other hand, hyperinflation and food insecurity remain in South Sudan. Education and clean water for all are elusive goals.
A small non-profit like ours looks at enormous problems that governments and international NGOs cannot overcome — and turns back to doing what it can do.
We aren’t able to provide massive distributions of emergency food. But we were able to provide aid to farmers to buy seed in 2016. And we were able to provide price supports at the market so the resulting crops could be sold at lower prices, while still give farmers a profit.
We also, by building Wunlang School back in 2008, have provided a place where food supplies can be distributed. About 160 girls attending Wunlang School received sorghum, lentils, and cooking oil through a UNICEF program.
Girls’ literacy is still far behind boys’ (40 percent to 60 percent), but we have seen girls’ enrollment increase steadily in Wunlang since the school was built.
Word of Wunlang School has spread. As other parts of South Sudan become too difficult to live in, families have come to Wunlang to give their children a chance at education. Even when children are hungry, reports field manager Yel Maduok Ngor, they still show up for school.
Back in America, Thiou Village Project has raised enough money to enable us to provide school supplies and money for repairs.
We also had a remarkably successful fundraising day for our Malual-Chum project. It is our goal to get a well drilled in this village this year. Then women and girls like this won’t have to haul up dirty water with a tin can.
You can help with all these goals by making a donation. Then you will have done your part to bringing education and opportunity, despite all the obstacles, to remote parts of South Sudan.
Our friends at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Arlington, MA, one of our first supporters, have come through again. As they report in their weekly update (scroll down and look at the right-hand column), they’re raising funds again to provide the students at Wunlang School with school uniforms.
You might think this is a luxury with all the other suffering going on in South Sudan. But education is the key to the long-term solutions to this suffering. School uniforms are required; a family who can’t afford uniforms can’t and won’t send their kids to school.
We source our uniforms locally, providing jobs and income for local tailors. Our last delivery was by motorbike, as the dirt roads were too muddy for larger vehicles.
Our field director Yel Maduok Ngor (in the center, wearing tan) supervised the arrangement by sizes.
We’re so grateful to the people of St. Paul for providing this entrance into education and opportunity. The church is raising funds for this campaign until October 4.
Waiting for malaria treatment at Wunlang Primary Care Center
Women and children wait outside Wunlang Primary Care Clinic, designed by our field manager Yel Madouk.
Our primary-care center can administer malaria medicine that will bring patients back to health.
Our peanut fields at harvest time.
Deng Madheiu, the Rhumathoi community-center manager, harvesting peanuts.
Looks pretty good!
VHSS executive director Franco Majok took these photos. He writes: “The big problem we have this year in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and maybe for all South Sudan is starvation, which is alarming everyone.” The food we grow, and the support we can provide for those growing food, will provide some relief to this remote part of South Sudan.