One Year After the Abduction and the Start of Save Yar

Today is the one year anniversary of the tragic abduction of Yar and Ajak Mading from the home of their grandmother in Lillir, South Sudan. This month, of course, also marks the end of the first year of the Save Yar Campaign and Child Protection International. 

Though our original goal of recovering the girls has proven yet unattainable, it is amazing to think of all that we have accomplished and to think of how far we have come from the classroom in Blegan Hall where Kou and Dan implored the class to take this on as a class project. To recap:

• We traveled to Washington D.C., where we met with congressional representatives, NGOs, and against all odds, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir. 

• We engaged Minnesota legislators in ongoing discussions about ending child abduction. 

• We generated dozens of newspaper and magazine articles as well as radio segments which discussed the work of the campaign and global child protection. 

• We traveled to South Sudan where we had face to face meetings with local and international officials, and generated more interest in the case of Yar and Ajak and inter-tribal child abduction. 

• We shared our findings in a congressional briefing in Washington DC. 

• We generated a great deal of student and community engagement in response to child abduction, and raised tens of thousands of dollars to work toward an end to child abduction. 

Needless to say, this is only a short list of the work that we have done. 

This month, we will have photographs from our trip to Juba on display at Common Roots Café on Lyndale Ave/27th St. in Uptown. We will also be hosting an event there, to honor the one year anniversary of the girls’ abdusction, in a couple of weeks. Watch this site to find out the details. 

I want to take this opportunity to say that we could not have done any of this without our supporters. If you have been with us in the past thank you, thank you, and thank you! We would not have made it this far without you!

And, if you have not been a supporter in the past, but would like to be, you can get involved by emailing info@childprotectioninternational.org, or use the donate button to give through this site. 

Here’s to making it through one year and moving into another!

Post by: Robyn Skrebes