"When I think of Sudan," says John Dau, "I like to remember life in my village. The land there was good, with plenty of water and grasslands for the cattle and goats that my people, the Dinka, survive on. But in 1983, when I was ten, the troubles began..." The announcement by Sudan’s Arab president that the country would become a Muslim state, combined with the introduction of Muslim sharia law, sparked a rebel movement among the indigenous Africans of Sudan resulting in a violent civil war that scars the country to this day. John Dau, like thousands of other African males in southern Sudan, was forced to flee his village and spent the next sixteen years on the run through the countryside trying to evade planes bombing overhead and marauding Arab militias on horseback.

One of the storied "Lost Boys of Sudan," John endured unimaginable hardships leading groups of displaced young men that he had encountered in the bush toward safety. With no clothes to guard them against the cold temperatures at night, no food or drink, and no weapons to fend off wild animals or hostile tribes, John’s group eventually – and miraculously – reached a refugee camp along the Ethiopian border, after four months of walking across the country. But it was not long before the refugee camp was itself attacked by Ethiopian rebels, after already being ravaged by a cholera outbreak, forcing John to lead the young men back into Sudan – where they faced renewed attacks from the Sudanese military. For many years, he lived in refugee camps or was fleeing from them.

In 2001, John was selected to emigrate from a refugee camp in northern Kenya to the United States, a place he had never even heard of until learning to read at the age of seventeen. His belated encounter with American culture was captured in an award-winning documentary, God Grew Tired of Us.

Since coming to the United States, John Dau has completed an associates degree at Syracuse University and written a book about his experiences. He has also established a nonprofit organization to bring healthcare and literacy to southern Sudan, and raised over seven hundred thousand dollars towards this effort. John has already successfully opened one medical clinic in Sudan, and now hopes to build and operate six additional clinics with integrated schoolrooms. "I don't know why I survived," he says. "Maybe it was something that God planned."

To learn more about John Dau and his cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit: http://www.johndaufoundation.org.

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