Former refugee seeks to build school in his Sudan homeland

to help village children escape poverty

He needs your help!

By Pr. Karen Safstrom, First, Lynn, Mass.

Most parents lecture their children about education being crucial to success in life, but when Franco Majok gives that lecture to his three young sons, he emphasizes how, for him, education was critical to his very survival in life. And if you have encountered Franco since December 2005, when he made his first trip home to the southern Sudan in 23 years, you, too, have probably heard him speak passionately about the importance of education for success in life, especially for the future success of the children in his home village of Wunlang in Sudan.

Today, as Franco works diligently to raise money for the Wunlang School Project, a mission project he started at First Lutheran Church, Lynn, Mass., to build and sustain a school in his home village, he explains the importance education has made in his life, both in the Sudan and here in the United States. He tells how his father, a police officer, realized early on the importance of education for his four sons’ future and became the only one in their home village at that time to send his children to school. Franco cites that education he obtained at boarding school as critical in his survival when in 1983 he was forced to flee his home village because of the civil war that broke out between governments of the north and the south. “It became very dangerous to live there,” he says. “I used my education to escape to the north by reading maps and directions to get to a safe place.” That safe place was Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where he worked in a factory and took night classes to finish his high school education.

Soon, even that place became too dangerous to live and he had to use his education again to flee, this time using it to apply for a visa to leave the country. He ended up in Egypt where education helped him yet again when he found employment as an office manager through ESL and computer classes he took at St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Cairo. His education continued to help there as he applied for refugee resettlement in 1997 and as he, his wife, their son, two nieces and two nephews were settled in Lynn in September 1998. And now, as a United States citizen, Franco uses his education to counsel young refugees as a case manager with the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program operated by Lutheran Social Services of New England in Wellesley, Mass.

It was his own life experience, his work with young refugees here, and his return to his home village that inspired Franco to start the Wunlang School Project in December 2005. Seeing first hand the challenges those in his village face even today with hunger and poverty, Franco decided that the best way to help the people there build a future was to get the children an education so they can work to solve the community’s problems. “I believe education is central for Wunlang children,” he says; “otherwise they have no future.”

To raise the funds needed for construction of the school, Franco has reached out well beyond Lynn to churches, schools, colleges and community organizations from Massachusetts to Maine to Pennsylvania. He has even been interviewed on “The World” on NPR! In his quest to transform his home village through education, Franco will not stop until his vision is achieved because as he says with a smile, “Wunlang will be a very different village when this goal is realized.”

For more information or to donate to the Wunlang School Project please contact First Lutheran Church in Lynn at (781) 598-0481 or visit our website at www.flc-lynn.org.