A few months ago, the Bill Cook Foundation was approached by Sebastian Maroundit and his foundation, Building Minds in South Sudan (bmiss.org). They are trying to educate children in Mayen Abun, a village near where Sebastian lived as a young boy until he was driven away by horrific violence. Sebastian has since built a school for girls, making it possible for them to get an education. Moreover, he had to train and hire female teachers and a female principal. The Bill Cook Foundation pledged $27,000 over three years to train the teachers and hire a principal. The first third of our gift to them was used this summer. Now, with the school almost completed, more than 500 girls have enrolled.
Recently, Sebastian posted on Facebook the success in preparing for these new students. A teacher in Mayen Abun, Barac Acuil Rual, wrote the following response after I posted a statement about how happy the Bill Cook Foundation is to be helping the people there:
You and the foundation deserve grateful thanks for this great breakthrough have been doing in my community, it is so humanitarian in nature and is very much seen as a wake up call for my community to sincerely acknowledge such great assistance from our well-wishers. This sisterly help from overseas to my dear community shall ever beyond and be spoken to the successive generations in the next so many decades. Bill Cook Foundation and its contributors will remain in the history of my community undisturbed for such great contributions in the fight against illiteracy in the vicinity of my community, educating girls is pretty becoming and our eyes are on Bill Cook Foundation to see tangible results in the girls' education in Twic state.
I visited Mayen Abun with Sebastian in March. Many of the mothers of girls who will attend school for the first time, all of them illiterate, greeted me (and by extension all our donors) with dance and gifts, including a wonderful basket and a goat. The basket proudly sits on my dining room table. I donated the goat to the boys’ school since it was in session, and it provided protein for the students.
This is one of many projects we are carrying out with your help. If you wish to support the girls of Mayen Abun, or any of our activities in 20 countries, please indicate where you would like your money directed when you make a gift. The new school year will soon begin in many parts of the world, and we are in need of gifts large and small. Just click on the Donate button on our website.
