Please Help the South Sudan Famine Relief Mission

Here is information about an important initiative led by my courageous friend, Simon Deng. Donate HERE. The need is GREAT.

South Sudan Famine Relief Mission

This dying baby is the tragic face of South Sudan.The world’s newest country is in a profound crisis. Hunger has become starvation. Civil war has become genocide.While the daily horror of South Sudan remains but a minor news story in the American media, to the millions of suffering people there, it is—tragically, bitterly, crushingly—the only story.
The UN is struggling to raise the $1.4 billion necessary to provide critical food aid for South Sudan (they have only raised 14% of their goal), even as famine spreads and refugees flee across borders in record numbers. Food rations have just been cut to refugees in camps in Uganda. In March alone, more refugees seeking sanctuary fled north to Sudan—an unthinkable act during the decades of war between the South and the North—than were expected to do so during this entire year.

(Photo by AFP, taken May 11, 2017, showing women and children lined up to register at a camp for internally displaced people in South Sudan.)

In short, the situation is beyond imagining. It is a problem far too big for the traditional humanitarian aid community to solve. The combination of a dangerous security situation, little modern infrastructure, and a looming 6-month rainy season, means that additional aid is desperately needed.

We seek to raise $87,000 to fund a nimble humanitarian aid mission to South Sudan and the border areas with Sudan to which thousands of people are fleeing daily. We plan to purchase food and seeds locally, in Sudan, and to deliver them to refugees in some of the smaller camps (formal and informal) which are not being provided with adequate food (or any food) by the UN or other agencies.

The situation remains incredibly fluid—thousands of refugees may arrive at a camp one day, then leave two days later due to violence or lack of food or water—so we may also decide to spend some funds on tents, blankets, or other critical supplies. Any funds raised beyond our goal will be spent for the same purpose, either on this mission or a subsequent trip. We hope to raise enough funds to leave for the region in June.

This effort is led by Simon Deng, a Bronx-based activist and former child slave from South Sudan. An American citizen, Simon has been advocating for the people of his native land for decades. He will coordinate and lead the mission, using his vast web of connections and knowledge of Sudan and South Sudan to keep the team safe and see that all funds are wisely spent.

(Simon Deng, activist, organizer, former hunger striker, and former Sudanese national swimming champion.)

Please contribute to this effort today and spread the word by sharing it as widely as possible. Your donations will be managed by Pahsodo Community Mutual Assistance Association, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered with the IRS as a public charity. This page is managed on Simon Deng’s behalf by his friend & colleague Nathan Kleinman.

In South Sudan today, people are dying because of who they are and where they were born. This is a genocide. You may be unfamiliar with the groups of people involved (Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Nubian, etc), but they are all people. They all deserve to live in dignity and peace.

Help us help them live to see another day.

Thank you.

[NOTE: Unless otherwise mentioned, photos were taken during the past year in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, some in camps that have now been abandoned as famine spreads and people attempt to get further from the violence.]

Help spread the word!