Group which helped Garang Buk Buk attend college in US to hold fundraiser
The Haddonfield Education Association invites the public to attend its inaugural Global Citizen Dinner on Friday, Dec. 7, at First Presbyterian Church from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The event will be hosted by Friends of Garang and South Sudan. The program will include dinner, a performance and panel discussion. The panel will discuss what it means to be a global citizen, and what citizens can do now as well as beyond the holiday season, to celebrate community and diversity.
Music during dinner will be performed by The Midnight Judges, a jazz trio of student and professional musicians. The after-dinner performance will be undertaken by Noteworthy, an all-female student a capella group.
The panel will be comprised of Dr. Hilary King, Sustainable Development Fellow from Emory University, Haddonfield Memorial High School seniors Wayden Ay, Kathleen Lee, Mo Jishi, Natalie Naticchia and Yao Yu, and HMHS English teacher Kimberly Dickstein. Special panel guest will be Garang Buk Buk Piol, a Sudanese native who is studying at Emory.
Dickstein, along with the students affectionately dubbed The Five by Garang, have been deeply involved in becoming global citizens through their combined work to fund his educational pursuits in the United States.
Dickstein was invited to attend the annual meeting of the Carter Center Board of Councilors, which took place in Atlanta on Sept. 12, along with Garang and her students, because of the tireless efforts of the group to get him to Emory to further his education.
Garang was a victim of armed conflict in South Sudan and a former Carter Center Guinea worm eradication program officer. He was accepted to Emory’s master’s in Development Practice program and began his studies in September. Scholarships were able to cover most of his tuition, but to get a U.S. visa, he would have to prove he has the resources to financially support himself in Atlanta — which he didn’t.
Dickstein stepped up and started a GoFundMe campaign in June 2018, inviting interested students to help with the advocacy campaign. Team Garang came together this summer, and raised $21,000 in only three weeks by canvassing door-to-door in Haddonfield. There is more work to be done, as they still have to fundraise the tuition and expenses for three more semesters.
Since the response from the Haddonfield community was overwhelmingly positive in the initial stages of the campaign, Dickstein and her students made a public presentation at the board of education’s Sept. 27 meeting that aimed to raise additional awareness in the community.
Garang made a personal appearance to meet his benefactors during a four-day trip to the borough in early October, which included an assembly at the high school informing students about his life, his work and his educational goals.
According to Dickstein, the dinner will be similar to the assembly, except open to the whole community, so that they have an opportunity to meet Garang and ask questions about his journey. The HMHS class of 2021 is expected to present Garang with a large donation from its Spirit Week fundraising at the dinner, which will be used for his second-semester tuition payment.
For more information about the fundraising dinner, visit hea.globalcitizen@gmail.com. Suggested donation per ticket is $65. If anyone wishes to donate, Garang’s GoFundMe can be found at www.gofundme.com/get-garang-to-emory.
