{"id":4618,"date":"2011-04-27T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T19:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/?p=407"},"modified":"2014-05-14T15:30:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T22:30:58","slug":"my-reflections-on-volunteering-in-southern-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philborges.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/27\/my-reflections-on-volunteering-in-southern-sudan\/","title":{"rendered":"My Reflections on Volunteering in Southern Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">My name is Danielle Prince and I volunteered the summer of 2010 with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.valentinoachakdeng.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0 How can I sum up all the pieces of my experience in Southern Sudan during my 5 weeks there?\u00a0\u00a0 I am forever touched and changed by the women and girls I worked with.\u00a0 Despite the intense heat, cornucopia of bugs and other flying creatures, and relative \u2018slowness\u2019 of how things happen \u2013 or maybe because of these things &#8211; my time there was shaped and nurtured not only by the environment (so different than Seattle), but more significantly by getting to know the girls at the secondary school as well as some of the women in the market.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Girls_Me.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-410\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Girls_Me.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><em><span class=\"caption\">Me hanging out with the girls on market day.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>My two projects (and their off-shoots) ran parallel: creating a girls\u2019 club that metamorphosed into individual one-on- one interviews that I then got to write up and present to the Foundation; creating and facilitating a women\u2019s group on the weekends for the tea-shop owners in the market.\u00a0 While both were distinct, each lent a glimpse into the lives of women in Southern Sudan: what their hopes and dreams are, what they hold dear, what issues they face as problematic and challenging.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Womens_Group_Horizontal.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-411\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Womens_Group_Horizontal.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><em><span class=\"caption\">The weekly Women&#8217;s Group meeting.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>After I had worked with the market women for a while, they gradually started to open up.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a few of the questions they began to ask me after a while:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Do American men accept having a baby girl (are they happy for it)?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> If your husband divorces you, can you still have and raise a child?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> If you have a child out of wedlock, what can you tell that child?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Why do men in America marry only 1 wife?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> In America, can a woman leave an abusive husband with her children\u00a0or\u00a0does she have to stay?<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Do you have women working in tea shops or in big companies in your\u00a0country?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The women and girls told me specifically that they want people to know about them:\u00a0 they want you, Reader, to know about them.\u00a0\u00a0 I remain committed to raising awareness about their lives and a strong advocate in portraying them as they are: resilient individuals who are taking charge of their lives by pursuing education, creating livelihoods and being on the forefront of a rapidly changing nation, rather than simply victims of war, politics and erratic aid efforts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Tea_Shop_Women_1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-412\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Tea_Shop_Women_1.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><em><span class=\"caption\">Tea shop owners.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>You can read more about my experience in Stirring the Fire\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.org\/take-action\/how-others-got-involved\/21\" target=\"_blank\">How Others Got Involved<\/a>\u201d section.\u00a0 I will also be contributing on an ongoing basic to Stirring the Fire\u2019s website and blog!\u00a0 Stay tuned for upcoming posts of my interviews with the women and girls in Sudan as well as my other volunteer experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Update: \u00a0Interview of one of the tea shop owners <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stirringthefire.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/19\/a-glimpse-into-the-life-of-a-tea-shop-owner\/\">here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Danielle Prince and I volunteered the summer of 2010 with The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.\u00a0 How can I sum up all the pieces of my experience in Southern Sudan during my 5 weeks there?\u00a0\u00a0 I am forever touched and changed by the women and girls I worked with.\u00a0 Despite the intense heat,&#8230;  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.philborges.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/27\/my-reflections-on-volunteering-in-southern-sudan\/\" class=\"more-link\" title=\"Read My Reflections on Volunteering in Southern Sudan\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[154,200,176,246,247,248,80,170,249],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stirring-the-fire","tag-danielle-prince","tag-empowering-girls","tag-empowering-women","tag-girls-education","tag-southern-sudan","tag-the-valentino-achak-deng-foundation","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteer-story","tag-womens-groups"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>My Reflections on Volunteering in Southern Sudan - Phil Borges<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.philborges.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/27\/my-reflections-on-volunteering-in-southern-sudan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Reflections on Volunteering in Southern Sudan - Phil Borges\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My name is Danielle Prince and I volunteered the summer of 2010 with The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.\u00a0 How can I sum up all the pieces of my experience in Southern Sudan during my 5 weeks there?\u00a0\u00a0 I am forever touched and changed by the women and girls I worked with.\u00a0 Despite the intense heat,... 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