Erica Bryant's Article

Erica Bryant recently published an article about BMISS in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Here's an excerpt:

 

Halfway across the world, Angelina Awien Malek walks three miles on her knees to get to a school that Rochester helped build. Polio crippled her legs, but not her resolve. So she starts out at 6 a.m. and arrives at 9:30 every school day.

Sebastian Maroundit showed me her picture, part of a slideshow from his recent trip home to South Sudan. After being chased from his village there as a child he joined a generation of "lost boys" who were displaced by a brutal war between northern and southern Sudan. He spent his childhood in refugee camps and eventually settled in Rochester.

Continue reading the full article in the D&C's paid archive.

 

WXXI News accompanies us to South Sudan

Local media have been very supportive of our efforts in Rochester, and that support continues this week as a team (reporter Hélène Biandudi and videographer Matthew Adams) from WXXI travels with Sebastian Maroundit and Bonnie Lloyd to visit Mayen-Abun. 

Hélène has been posting articles on the WXXI website, and over the coming weeks the video will be used to produce documentaries and feature stories for Need to Know Rochester, Homework Hotline and Assignment: the World.

In the local media...

Sebastian, Mathon and others recently completed a trip to Mayen-Abun, where they celebrated the groundbreaking for the school and initiated construction for the first four classrooms. Upon their return, Rochester media covered the exciting news.

The Democrat and Chronicle published a guest essay by Bonnie Lloyd. A group of supporters were at the airport to welcome the team home, and YNN was there to tell the story. 

Pads for Power

Judy Schwartz, BMIS board member and Chair of Ambassador Program, shares her own moving story of preparing for and taking a trip to Sudan. "In May of 2010, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a volunteer service mission in the village of Atiaba, Sudan. It all began with the 2009 Or Ami (Light Unto My People) Award winning project “Pads for Power,” sewing cotton personal hygiene pads for the young girls in the secondary school, so that they could attend everyday without a monthly break. Members of St. James’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA, developed this project based on their observation of the need for the pads during their annual mission to the village." Click below to read the full story.