Sometimes you might feel powerless to help people suffering in poverty. The problems seem too big. Our perspective: We can’t change the whole world, but together, we can see One Village Transformed.
World Concern’s campaign matches you with a community for three years. With your support, we are working with the community to accomplish specific goals as they begin to see a better future emerge.
Lietnhom is a village in South Sudan, the world’s newest country, which celebrated its independence in July 2011. But 20 years of civil war took its toll on the people here. More than two million died. Four million were displaced from their homes. The war depleted livelihoods and left most of South Sudan without basic infrastructure and government services.
With you, World Concern is walking alongside families in Lietnhom, helping them build their lives and their community from the ground up. Together, we're focusing on long-term solutions, so the people of Lietnhom can stand on their own.
Our priorities over these next three years will include:
Circular huts with thatched roofs are separated by dirt roads that wind through the village of Lietnhom, South Sudan. Children run barefoot, with little to do to pass the time. Most of them have never set foot in a school. Those whose can afford school sit on the ground or in plastic chairs outside to learn. A shady spot under a tree is their classroom.
Years of oppression and war have led to extreme poverty in Lietnhom. Most families survive on meager incomes from raising cattle, or selling firewood or thatch. Small farms are rain fed and vulnerable to droughts, which are common here.
There are only three wells in this village of 10,000 people, so many people collect water from filthy ponds. The children in Lietnhom show signs of malnourishment and sicknesses like malaria and typhoid. In desperation, parents will pay a witch doctor for superstitious and ineffective advice.
But things are changing in Lietnhom ...
For $33 a month for three years, you will take part in an amazing transformation. We need partners like you to make it happen.
With your ongoing gift, you will receive a quarterly email update about how your gift is changing the lives of individual families.
Our promise to you is that you will see real and lasting impact as lives are saved and transformed.
Lietnhom Update| Spirng/Summer 2012
Your support is making a big difference in the village of Lietnhom for people like Veronica Ajok, a mother of six children who struggles to feed her family.
“We rely on rain, and when there is no rain, we don’t have food,” she said. With the help of donations like yours, World Concern gave Veronica agricultural training and seeds. “I planted ground nuts and sorghum,” Veronica said. “I will sell the surplus after the harvest.” She hopes to get an ox plow and earn enough money for her children to get an education.
Akot Ajoik is a farmer and teacher with four children. “I try to improve my condition through cultivation,” he says. World Concern helped Akot increase his crop yields with an ox plow and money for hired help. “World Concern has helped me a lot. I was having a problem cultivating my crop. World Concern donated money to me, and I am able to hire people for weeding. The future of this area is improving. With World Concern’s help, we will be able to cultivate more.”
With your support, we’re also providing microloans to help build businesses in this impoverished village.
Peter Madut is the manager of a pharmacy where he has worked for two years. “We started small, and now we are able to expand and build a new pharmacy,” Peter said. “World Concern loaned us money and allowed us to start this business. It is very good now, and we get something to eat. Now there is something to support our families, and we don’t have challenges like before. World Concern really helped us. Thank you for the support.”
The people of Lietnhom had a very special visitor since our last report. Singer Jenny Simmons, formerly of the band Addison Road, traveled with us to see the transformation taking place in Lietnhom first hand. She sang a few songs, backed by the local church choir. Jenny fell in love with the people of this village.
Here’s an excerpt from Jenny’s blog:
“Last week in Lietnhom, South Sudan, I slept under a tin roof (one of the only tin roofs in the village; everything else is thatched) during one of the biggest thunderstorms I have ever heard in my life. The rain sounded like an army. Constant, steady, violent, encroaching. Angry. All night long it pounded away at the roof like artillery fire.
Like most of South Sudan, there is no electricity in the village of Lietnhom. So when it is dark, it is very dark. And when bolts of lightning strike, they pierce the sky with an unbelievably cruel, taunting brightness.
It must be scary as a small child to live in a hut with a thatched roof and no electricity during a thunderstorm. It is utter darkness. No sound of cars in the distance. No highways. No stadium lights or street lights or sirens. Can you even imagine that kind of darkness? That kind of silence? I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I was. In fact, I was scared during much of my trip to South Sudan.
Just because I spent a few days in the bush of South Sudan doesn’t make me a saint or a hero or even a humanitarian. I’m not. I’m scared and selfish…
Although she was stunned by the extreme poverty there, Jenny was also encouraged to see the progress we’re making – with your help – and lives being transformed.
“Sometimes we don’t know where to start. This is a good place,” she wrote.
Thank you for taking action and being a part of ending poverty in the village of Lietnhom. You are making a difference!
Blessings,
— The Team at World Concern
