Since the mid-1980's, Sudan -- located in East Africa - has experienced brutal civil war fueled by religious, ethnic and regional strive.  Fleeing the violence and bloodshed of Sudan's internal conflict, thousands of innocent children have experienced mind-numbing horrors and intense hardship.  Orphaned children as young as four years old carried baby brothers and sisters as they fled for their lives  - not knowing where they were going or what the future held.

For many, the future was short-lived. Trekking hundreds of miles on foot through the hostile East African desert, many children died of starvation, thirst or attack by wild animals.  Later,  survivors told how they watched vultures feed on the bodies of their dead friends.  Many children ate leaves to stay alive. 

Miraculously, thousands survived the ordeal of the late 1980's, finding refuge in camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.  There, the children - mostly boys - formed their own "family" groups, with older children protecting the younger ones.  Relief workers named the children the "Lost Boys" -after Peter Pan's lost boys who clung together to escape a hostile adult world.

Now, about 4000 young Sudanese refugees are on the threshold of a new beginning in the United States.  Churches and relief agencies across the U.S. are working to help hundreds of Sudan's "Lost Boys" start a new life in freedom and safety. 

WORLD RELIEF and other agencies are partnering with churches in America to resettle approximately 4000 of the LOST BOYS in the United States: to find homes, educational opportunities, training, and employment.  ". . . . my son which was lost has not been found."

Valentino Achak Deng was seven or eight years old when he fled the civil-war stricken Sudan. He walked to Ethiopia with 30,000 children but was forced to flee again to a refugee camp in Kenya, one of only 10,000 children to survive the journey. In Kenya, Valentino attended high school and worked with the United Nations’ youth and culture program. Valentino was sent to the United States for resettlement in 2001, one of the last lost boys allowed out. Currently living and working in Clarkson, Georgia, Valentino Achak Deng shares an apartment with four of his lost boys “brothers.” He is a highly requested speaker at schools and colleges, churches, civic originations and religious institutions, sharing a message of character, perseverance, faith and hope. He was also featured on CNN’s Inside Africa.