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.
Nuba Women asked for help
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, Bishop
Mubarak Fund 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 Bishop
Mubarak Fund 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.
A project centre, 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 the Bishop Mubarak Fund's work, is now registered with the Sudanese
Humanitarian Affairs Commission as an INGO.
Displaced
Nuba children
In January 2005 Together for Sudan opened its
second project centre, 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
Together for Sudan 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 Together for Sudan 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 Together for Sudan 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.