Wells for Hope for South Sudan

In 1983, when the Second Civil War broke out in Sudan, thousands of children had to leave their villages to search for a safe place to live. They walked hundreds of miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. They are known as The Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan.

In 2011, as a result of the ending of the war, people in the southern part of Sudan voted to become a separate nation known as South Sudan.

Majok Marier was one of the fortunate “Lost Boys of Sudan” who was relocated to the USA. He settled in Clarkston, GA where he found work as a plumber’s assistant. When his sister back in his home village died in childbirth. Majok knew that he needed to do something to give rural villages in South Sudan access to better medical care. He wanted to raise money to build a health clinic but realized that no clinic could operate without clean water, which was very hard to get in these villages, so he wrote a book about his refugee journey to help raise funds for wells and with his co-author, Estelle Ford-Williamson and a small group of volunteers, formed the non-profit known as Wells for Hope for South Sudan in 2014.

South Sudan is at this writing the newest country on earth and one of the least developed. It is usually women and children who fetch water for their families in these villages, walking up to 12 miles round trip and carrying a full jug on their heads on the way back.

Every year, millions of African people die of diseases from unsafe water sources. More people die from contaminated water than from all forms of violence combined, including wars. One village well can bring clean drinking water to hundreds of people.

To date, thanks to many individual donations and funds raised with the annual Walk for Water and Health, Wells for Hope for South Sudan has provided eight wells, each costing $10,000 or more.