With support from a CNCS Martin Luther King Jr., Mini-Grant, Le Moyne College, Onondaga Community College and Cazenovia College hosted “Celebration of Hope: An Evening of Inspiration to Benefit the Ariang Primary School in the Republic of South Sudan.” The event, which attracted over 100 attendees, raised $3,635 for the school and generated 425 cards and letters of support and encouragement for the 400 children enrolled at the school which was founded by Le Moyne and Onondaga alumnus Gabriel Bol Deng, who arrived in Syracuse in 2000 as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Celebration of Hope, was the culminating event in a CNCS supported Semester of Service at Le Moyne. The event included a keynote address by Mr. Deng, African craft fair, and multi-campus card and letter writing project called Letters of Hope.

To expand our outreach, Le Moyne collaborated with InterFaith Works of CNY and the Syracuse Post-Standard to provide Mr. Deng with a week of columns in the newspaper’s Daily Inspiration feature. Mr. Deng wrote: “Education is my Mother and Father.” This is the philosophy that every Lost Boy clung to while fleeing their villages during the civil war. I adopted this philosophy in the refugee camp in Ethiopia while sitting under the tree learning—and writing my alphabet in the dirt. The war deprived me of my mother and father at the age of ten—but they inculcated the fundamental values of hard work and perseverance in the face of adversity. I pressed ahead—knowing that education would be my only hope for a better future. I knew my parents were with me, proud of the person I had become.

Leading up to the event, students from Le Moyne, Onondaga, and Cazenovia participated in service projects and fundraising for the Hope for Ariang Foundation to provide school supplies, uniforms, and food for the children as they endure a devastating drought in the region. The letter-writing project at Le Moyne attracted 55 students who wrote messages in English and Dinka, the native language of Ariang, to the school’s children. We also collaborated with a local elementary school where children learned about South Sudan and wrote letters to their peers in Ariang.

Concurrent with these projects, Prof. Diane Zigo, Le Moyne Department of Education, led a service-learning project in her course “Literacy Development in the Content Area,” in which students created textbooks and lesson plans for the Ariang School where many of the teachers do not have formal training. By creating these lesson plans, Dr. Zigo’s students provided critical resources for both students and faculty for many years to come. The textbooks also provided enhanced cultural sensitivity for Le Moyne students, many of whom will teach in the highly diverse Syracuse public school system which serves high numbers of refugees who come through the city’s two refugee resettlement programs.

This event had both local and international impacts raising not only funds, but awareness and action on the part of Central New Yorkers working together for peace and social justice.