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A
Short
History
In
late 1996 Lillian Craig Harris, then living in Sudan where her husband, Alan
Goulty, who was British Ambassador, decided to act on a long held desire to help
disadvantaged women through university. Because perhaps 90 percent of the women
of the Nuba Mountains are illiterate, she chose to focus on them and named the
effort in honour of a recently deceased Episcopal clergyman,
Bishop Kurkeil Mubarak Khamis of the Diocese of El Obeid. Her plan was
limited: a handful of women would be sent to university and after they
graduated a few more would take their places. Instead, the Nuba women’s great
longing for education took over the project.
In
the spring of 1997 displaced Nuba women living in the Khartoum vicinity heard of
the Bishop Mubarak Fund, organized literacy classes and demanded payment of
teachers’ salaries. By May 1998 there were over 20 literacy classes. In one
area women launched two classes rather than one and started them three months
earlier than had been originally planned despite heat of nearly 50 degrees
centigrade. By its second year, BMF was sponsoring 15 university scholars and
had also begun basic and secondary school scholarships. A slogan, “Power to the
Powerless through Education” was chosen. By 2004 the BMF was sponsoring nearly
150 young women in Sudanese universities.
Before beginning the Bishop Mubarak Fund, Lillian had also facilitated
establishment of the English Language Foundation, the Women’s Action Group for
Peace and Development and Befrienders Khartoum (the Samaritans abroad) as well
as various other small projects. After Lillian moved to London in 1999, Together
for Sudan was set up to support these Sudanese charities and projects as well as
to support the rapidly expanding work of the Bishop Mubarak Fund. A small solar
project and medical work were subsumed under Together for Sudan and a slogan,
“Building Peace through Service” was selected.
An office, known for the next four years as
the Together for Peace office, was opened in Khartoum in October 1998. In
2002 the Bishop Mubarak Fund was registered to work in Sudan as an
international non-governmental organisation (INGO). BMF's sister charity,
Together for Sudan worked under that BMF umbrella until the two charities
merged in January 2005. Together for Sudan, incorporating BMF's work, is now
registered with the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Commission as an INGO.
In January 2005 Together for Sudan opened its
first sub-office, in Kadugli the capital of the Nuba Mountains. In January
2006 we began, with partial funding from the British Department for
International Development, a three year project which we are calling
"Education for the Nuba". Over the next three years we will train at least
60 women's literacy teachers, 60 pre-school teachers and 60 basic school
teachers and then place them with in-service training with local
schools. This means that TFS will pay their salaries during the time it
takes for them to complete their training. We expect that this pioneering
project will eventually change the lives of thousands of women and
children. The literacy teachers will be trained in the dynamic Reflect
method which typically, in an eight or nine month intensive course, allows 80
percent of the students to become literate.
In mid 2005 Together for Sudan began looking for funding
for a similar project which would expand our present educational work in the
settlements for displaced persons around Khartoum. This became possible
in 2006 thanks to the generosity of the Spanish charity Manos Unidas which
as agreed to fund TFS training of literacy teachers and basic school
teachers who are displaced persons in the Khartoum area. It is expected that many
of the some two million displaced southerners and westerners in these areas
will eventually return to their homelands. When they do so,
men and women trained as teachers, children who have received at least a
basic school education and women who have become literate will carry with them
invaluable gifts for employment, a more secure future and the rebuilding of
South and Western Sudan.
The success of TFS work can be attributed
first to the Nuba women's great desire for education. But it is also due to
dedicated volunteers in Sudan who have set up projects, to Sudanese teachers
who continue to work for low salaries, and to the great desire by the many
people of good heart, both in Sudan and elsewhere, who have sought to help
Sudan and its suffering people.
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