TTHHEE BBIISSHHOOPP MMUUBBAARRAAKK SSCCHHOOLLAARRSSHHIIPP FFUUNNDD FFOORR NNUUBBAA WWOOMMEENN && TTOOGGEETTHHEERR FFOORR SSUUDDAANN English charities no. 1075850 and 1075852

June 2004

Dear Friends, Sudan is an enormous country, the biggest in Africa. The needs of its people are likewise great. What can we do to help our Sudanese sisters and brothers, the suffering Sudanese people? In late May a peace agreement was signed which should lead to an early end to the devastating civil war which for over 20 years divided Sudan mainly along north-south lines. There is hope now for the coming long era of peace building. The Bishop Mubarak Scholarship Fund for Nuba Women and Together for Sudan, whose projects support BMF’s educational work, are committed for the long term to providing opportunity through education. Current ly our work is mainly in the Khartoum area and the Nuba Mountains, but with peace and increased funding we can eventually expand to other areas of Sudan. Yet despite peace agreement between the government and southern forces, all is not well in Sudan. Rebellion, atrocities and displacement in the western province of Darfur have produced the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis. Thousands have died in recent months and thousands more, the majority of them women and children, risk death by starvation, exposure and violence. We urge you to give to the British Red Cross, Christian Aid, CAFOD and other agencies able to work in that desperately troubled area of Sudan. BMF/TFS are not engaged in emergency relief but we are engaged in long term peace building by empowering Sudanese women and children though education. We take our lead from what disadvantaged and marginalised people say they need and we are dedicated to helping those whose lives have been shattered by war and displacement prepare for a better future. Look at this photo of some of this year’s BMF university graduates, whom I met with during a May visit to Khartoum. We have 20 more BMF scholars graduating this year, bringing total BMF university graduates to 37. Some 150 more BMF scholars will be at university in Khartoum in 2004-5.

See the joy on these graduates’ faces? They know the value of education and most of

them plan, with our support, to return to the Nuba Mountains as teachers.

As we move into Sudan’s peace building era, the Bishop Mubarak Fund and Together for Sudan are undergoing several important changes: *Our work in the Nuba Mountains is expanding. We hope to concentrate on teacher education, women’s literacy and support for elementary schools. *We are discussing partnerships with UN agencies including the World Food Programme, UN Development Programme and UNICEF and with charities with which we share common concerns. *Country Director Silas Jojo and his staff have moved into a larger Khartoum office and we are urgently looking for funding to open a sub-office in the Nuba Mountains . *Trustees of the BMF and TFS are in conversation about merging the two charities so as to concentrate on educational projects and on those support projects of direct benefit to education –such as distribution of simple medicines, breakfasts at schools, solar lighting panels to support women’s literacy classes and eye care for women and children.

*The BMF women’s literacy project has undergone a metamorphosis! Last year we closed all Khartoum area classes in order to retrain teachers in the more direct Reflect method which can produce literacy and numeracy in eight months rather than in the two years previously required. This month we reopen 20 literacy classes in the Khartoum area. Our Khartoum area teachers, along with those responsible for 11 additional BMF literacy classes in the Nuba Mountains and Abyei, are teaching some 1,000 women.

Reflect trained teachers show off their certificates

TFS solar panel: Nuba Mountains

But there are some issues and opportunities not directly related to education which we cannot ignore . These include: *Curable blindness. The Together for Sudan Eye Glasses Project includes one outreach to elderly people for every two outreaches to school children. In May I attended an outreach eye clinic for elderly people in the Wad El Bashir area on Khartoum’s outskirts. Here some 200,000 people, mainly from western Sudan, live in makeshift shelters made of cardboard and plastic. During a four hour visit TFS ophthalmologist Dr. Nabila Radi examined some 100 elderly individuals in heat of 50 degrees centigrade, supplying them with antibiotics and other medicines as well as with hope. She also supplied reading glasses and signed up 38 people for eye surgery over the next few days. “Look,” Dr. Nabila cried. “One eye socket empty and the other eye with a cataract. But she sees movement when I shine the torch into her eye. There’s life here: I can operate!” Imagine what being able to see again will mean for this woman. *The growing HIV/AIDS pandemic is another non-educational problem which we cannot ignore. Because the Women’s Action Group, a small Sudanese partner of TFS, is no longer able to remain in its own centre, TFS has taken over direct management of WAG’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Project. We hope eventually to extend this CAFOD - funded project to the Nuba Mountains where there is urgent need of health education and of medical services in general. BMF, meanwhile, is expanding its HIV/AIDS Orphans Scholarship Project which will benefit some 50 children this year thanks to a grant from the Scottish Episcopal Church. AIDS is a growing problem for Sudan which will not disappear but may in fact expand rapidly as displaced persons return home and troops demobilise.

Unschooled children in Nuba Mountains. In our experience the offer to pay teachers can even encourage a community to start a school. And wherever possible in the Nuba Mountains we would like schools to become TFS Medicine Box, Breakfast Project and Eye Glasses Project sites.

How can you help us help the Sudanese people? ° Thinking long term, you could send £400 ($720) to BMF to keep a young Sudanese

woman at university for another year. If you can afford to send £2,000 ($3,600) you could set up a named five year university scholarship in memory of a loved one.

° If you can donate £155 ($289), you will pay the salary of a literacy teacher for one year and help 30 Sudanese women learn to read.

° If you have £28 ($50) to share you can provide one year’s schooling to a child whose parents or guardians have died or been disabled by HIV/AIDS. Or you could pay a kindergarten teacher’s annual salary of £211 ($380) per year.

° You could send a donation in any amount to one of Together for Sudan’s projects. Right now we urgently need funding for the Breakfast Project (a nourishing meal is critical to children’s learning) and the Medicine Box Project (the only medicine source available to many families).

° You could remember BMF or Together for Sudan in your will. Doing so would be a very effective way to remain part of the work you support now and requires only the following phrase in your will: “I bequeath to the Bishop Mubarak Scholarship Fund for Nuba Women (UK registered charity 1075850) the sum of £_______ free of all duties and taxes. The bequest shall be spent at the discretion of the trustees and discharge shall be effected by a receipt signed by the treasurer or other authorised officer of the Fund.” Ask your solicitor for advice!

° You could go to our website at www.bishopmubarakfund.org.uk and find out more about us. And you could buy a ticket to the 14 October BMF fundraising reception at Lambeth Palace or make a contribution to that event. See the ticket below!

Or you could do nothing. There are many options. But I hope that you will share the joy of remembering the Sudanese people at this time of great need and great opportunity. With appreciation, Lillian Craig Harris Director P.S. We can save postage by emailing this periodic newsletter. If you are on line, send us your email address!

Make cheques payable to The Bishop Mubarak Fund, Norman Jackson, Treasurer, 47 Taunton Ave., London SW20 0BH or to Together for Sudan, Dina Gillespie, Treasurer, 45 Paramount Court, 41 University Street, London WC1E 6JP.