Emmanuel Jal is fighting to give the young people of Sudan the educational opportunities they deserve. As a child, the now famous Sudanese hip-hop musician was kept from school and forced to fight as a child soldier in Sudan's brutal civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives between 1983 and 2005.Unlike thousands of other “lost boys,” though, Jal survived. And by the time he was 13 he had witnessed the unspeakable horrors of war and had seen hundreds of other children like him perish. Now around 30-years-old (he’s not sure exactly when he was born) and with a critically acclaimed album and autobiography to his name, Jal is focused on building a school in Sudan to give children there the chances he never had.
“I’m willing to die for this,” he explains, “because this is a message I want the world to know. Education is the only way for my country. When you don't educate the people, you're crippling them ... you're not giving them ways to survive.”
For more information about Jal’s project visit http://www.gua-africa.org/.
1 comments:
You can buy Emmanuel's book, CD or DVD at warchildmovie.com. The DVD is incredibly moving.
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