THE LATEST--April, 2008
African Soul, American Heart Foundation is now a corporation and our 501(c)(3) status is pending. Our board meets this month to approve our by-laws and budget to raise funds for an orphanage in Duk Payuel, South Sudan.
Three minutes of our documentary-in progress can be viewed on the home page of the site. A thirty-minute broadcast-quality documentary will be available by fall of 2008. We are currently scheduling speaking engagements with film clips and a slideshow, as well as book signings for Joseph Makeer's book, From Africa to America: The Journey of a Lost Boy of Sudan.
Next fall look for the premiere of our documentary and for a traveling exhibit of photos from South Sudan. This exhibit will begin at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Please contact our speaking engagement coordinator for more information about ways your group can help us bring aid to orphans in South Sudan.
LONG RANGE GOAL
The African Soul, American Heart Foundation will help rebuild South Sudan by providing housing, food, clothing, and access to education and health care for orphans in Duk Payuel, a village in Jonglei State, South Sudan. Building on the example of John Dau who established a clinic there, we will expand our operations through the county as we are able. Other groups are working in this area and across South Sudan to develop an infrastructure--roads, wells, schools, churches, etc. Our efforts, combined with the efforts of many others from across the world will transform the lives of a people whose culture was nearly destroyed by genocide.
THE PAST--January, 2008
The African Soul, American Heart film crew—producer, writer, and photographer Deb Dawson, associate producer, writer, and B-roll cameraman Kevin Brooks, and lead cameraman and editor Matt McGregor returned to Fargo in time to celebrate Christmas with our families. Joseph Makeer returned two weeks later. We have thousands of photographs and more than twenty hours of video. It will take time for us to digest all that we have experienced and edit our story.
We have seen how survivors of the twenty-year civil war in South Sudan are working against tremendous odds, in a country still marked by unrest, to rebuild their devastated homeland. Thousands of their countrymen still in refugee camps, in cities in neighboring African countries and scattered across the globe, long to return to their villages, to revive their culture and customs and live traditional lives. But things have changed for all of them since the war. They want lives where their children are safe and where there is access to food, clean water, medical care, and schools. And there are thousands of orphans.
Along with individual orphans, we interviewed elders and pastors in Duk Payuel. We traveled to Poktop and met with the commissioner of Duk County and his staff, acquiring statistical data about the needs of the area, the services currently provided, and the aid groups operating there. This information, the contacts we’ve made, and our interviews with other groups working with orphans in Africa will help us determine how we can help the children who most need help in a manner that works within their culture.
