OUR MISSION
The mission of African Soul, American Heart Foundation is to use the arts—literary, film, and photographic—to raise funds to build a boarding facility for orphans in Duk Payuel, South Sudan. With the assistance of church and village leaders, we will provide for the children’s basic needs and enable their participation in village life and school, where all are struggling to rebuild after 22 years of devastating war.
LONG RANGE GOAL
The African Soul, American Heart Foundation will help rebuild South Sudan by providing housing, food, clothing, and access to education and health care for orphans in Duk Payuel, a village in Jonglei State, South Sudan. Building on the example of John Dau who established a clinic there, we will expand our operations through the county as we are able. Other groups are working in this area and across South Sudan to develop an infrastructure--roads, wells, schools, churches, etc. Our efforts, combined with the efforts of many others from across the world will transform the lives of a people whose culture was nearly destroyed by genocide.
THE LATEST - December 2009
Help Dreams Become Reality
October 2009
The ASAH board is gearing up to send a mailing by snail mail to update our supporters about our work and plans for the coming year. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, email info@africansoulamericanheart.org. If you would like to be added to our online newsletter, click the sign up button on our site.
Joseph Akol Makeer and board member Ron Saeger recently returned from a trip to Kenya and Southern Sudan. In Kenya they met with the five Sudanese orphans we support in boarding school, and in Duk Payuel and Juba, Southern Sudan, Joseph met with government officials and villagers to register our organization and to see how things have changed in the village. Since our last visit in 2008, the Lost Boys Clinic has been remodeled and services expanded, an international group has constructed a permanent school building with three classrooms, and other projects are underway.
Upcoming: See our events list--photo exhibit at Fargo North High School in November/December, and at Bismarck Art Galleries Association in February 2010.
ASAH participated with a booth at the Women's Showcase at the Fargodome on October 17.
January 2009
February 3-March 21, Nichole's Fine Pastry at 13 8th St S in Fargo, ND will host "Returning Home," a selection of images from the recent exhibit of Deb Dawson's photos of Duk Payuel, Sudan. Following this exhibit, the show will travel to Mankato, Minnesota.
November 2008
Thanks to the more than 330 people in Fargo-Moorhead and surrounding areas who came to see the premiere of African Soul, American Heart. It was very gratifying to all of us who have worked so hard to make this documentary and to bring us a step closer to our overall goal. We are now scheduling screenings and speaking engagements for local groups, churches, and schools. See Events page for more information.
The gallery exhibit, African Soul, American Heart: Images of Duk Payuel, Sudan, runs through December 19 at the Cyrus Running Gallery at Concordia College in Moorhead. The gallery can be reached either through France Frazier Comstock Theatre (bldg #19) or Olin Communications Center (bldg #22). For a campus map click http://www.cord.edu/About/Visit/campusmap.php
October 2008
Joseph Akol Makeer, Jef Foss, and Ron Saeger traveled to Kampala, Uganda to attend a conference on building centers for orphans in Africa. This conference was sponsored by Watoto Children’s Choir, a group that has been serving orphans throughout Uganda since 1994. From there they traveled to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to Bor, the capital of Jonglei State, and from there Duk Payuel, Joseph’s village to meet with village elders and pastors to learn more about the situation for orphans in the area and how we can best serve them. You can read more about their experience and observations of Uganda and Sudan at Jef’s blog: http://Drop.io/AppaSudan
April 2008
African Soul, American Heart Foundation is now a corporation and our 501(c)(3) status is pending. Our board meets this month to approve our by-laws and budget to raise funds for an orphanage in Duk Payuel, South Sudan.
Three minutes of our documentary-in progress can be viewed on the home page of the site. A thirty-minute broadcast-quality documentary will be available by fall of 2008. We are currently scheduling speaking engagements with film clips and a slideshow, as well as book signings for Joseph Makeer's book, From Africa to America: The Journey of a Lost Boy of Sudan.
Next fall look for the premiere of our documentary and for a traveling exhibit of photos from South Sudan. This exhibit will begin at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Please contact our speaking engagement coordinator for more information about ways your group can help us bring aid to orphans in South Sudan.
January 2008
The African Soul, American Heart film crew—producer, writer, and photographer Deb Dawson, associate producer, writer, and B-roll cameraman Kevin Brooks, and lead cameraman and editor Matt McGregor returned to Fargo in time to celebrate Christmas with our families. Joseph Makeer returned two weeks later. We have thousands of photographs and more than twenty hours of video. It will take time for us to digest all that we have experienced and edit our story.
We have seen how survivors of the twenty-year civil war in South Sudan are working against tremendous odds, in a country still marked by unrest, to rebuild their devastated homeland. Thousands of their countrymen still in refugee camps, in cities in neighboring African countries and scattered across the globe, long to return to their villages, to revive their culture and customs and live traditional lives. But things have changed for all of them since the war. They want lives where their children are safe and where there is access to food, clean water, medical care, and schools. And there are thousands of orphans.
Along with individual orphans, we interviewed elders and pastors in Duk Payuel. We traveled to Poktop and met with the commissioner of Duk County and his staff, acquiring statistical data about the needs of the area, the services currently provided, and the aid groups operating there. This information, the contacts we’ve made, and our interviews with other groups working with orphans in Africa will help us determine how we can help the children who most need help in a manner that works within their culture.
