Opposing units of the Presidential Guard traded fire on Dec. 15, according to Amnesty International. Juba, the capital of South Sudan, became the epicenter of a conflict that resonated throughout the country’s 10 states.
The next day, applications for the education program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, were due.
“That was sadly coincidental,” said Arlene Benitez, director of international outreach and development at IU.
The program, South Sudan Higher Education Initiative for Equity and Leadership Development, was designed to take place in South Sudan in order to increase the number of educated women in the country.
The master’s program was only one side of the program. It was only for women in education who already had undergraduate degrees.
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and also one of the least educated with a literacy rate of 27 percent overall and, as of 2009, 16 percent for women, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book.
Not many girls make it to primary school, and far fewer go to university, Benitez said.
“In the field of education, there aren’t too many teachers and especially qualified female teachers,” she said.
When the conflict broke out, Benitez, along with professor of curriculum and instruction Terry Mason, waited to see what would unfold.
“We had a couple of weeks where we were hoping the situation would come down,” Benitez said. “And as we saw that it was escalating, we realized this was going to be a much bigger crisis and that there was probably no way we were going to be able to do what we had planned.”
As USAID shifted its efforts from education to providing humanitarian aid, Benitez and her colleagues had to make a choice: abandon the program in its entirety, or take it apart and redesign it to take place in the U.S.
They chose to redesign the program.
Using the funds from USAID through Higher Education for Development, Benitez and her colleagues were able to bring 14 South Sudanese women to IU in order to earn master’s degrees from the School of Education.
Out of the 63 applicants for the original program, 25 semi-finalists were chosen.
The program had already been redesigned to take place in the U.S. by the time the semi-finalists were chosen.
Five of those semi-finalists were not interviewed either because they could not be reached due to the conflict, or they decided they couldn’t travel to the U.S.
Twenty went to Kampala, Uganda, to be interviewed by a panel of IU faculty and USAID workers for two days.
One of those 20 semi-finalists was Drania Abula, ?a teacher trainer for Windle Trust International.
Windle Trust is a UK-based charity with offices in South Sudan that provide access to both education and education training in several countries throughout Africa, according to its website.
Abula applied for the program because out of more than 200 tutors Windle Trust employs, her program director, Masua David , encouraged only her to apply.
And, following the two days of interviews, Abula was told she was one of the 14 women accepted into the ?program.
“He was the happiest,” Abula said of her director. “He was very proud.”
The program that was once going to send IU faculty to South Sudan for intensive, short programs now brought the South Sudanese women to IU.
When Abula left South Sudan, she said that while things had begun to calm down in the nation’s capital, the other nine states of South Sudan were in turmoil.
“When we were leaving South Sudan, people were having hope that things would calm down,” she said.
But before they could settle down in their on-campus apartments for the year, the women spent five weeks this past summer back in Kampala for some intensive English training.
They also took basic education courses to prepare them for IU.
They arrived just in time for orientation, Abula said.
“They are dealing with the same things that any graduate student deals with,” Benitez said.
The classes they’re taking touch on issues and topics specific to South Sudan.
These women are learning how to continue educating a population in the midst of a war.
They are learning the tools and skills they’ll need to deal with the current conflict and its effect on the country, Benitez said.
“The coursework that the women are taking are specifically designed with them in mind,” she said.
Wile the classes are exclusively for the women in the program, these women will have the option to take an elective with other IU students during the spring semester.
“When we started classes, it was not easy,” Abula said, because people are taught differently in South Sudan than they are in the US.
The size of the books were intimidating, and they had to be taught how to read critically, Abula said.
What takes Americans one hour to read, she said, it takes her three.
But, Abula wasn’t discouraged. She learned how to manage her time to focus solely on studying when she had to and still carve out personal time.
Now, she said, it’s much easier, and she can apply what she’s learning to several ?classes.
Abula is taking advantage of her time at IU, choosing to live with two American roommates as well as another program member from South Sudan.
She said that if she is in America, she wanted to learn something new about the people who lived there.
“Every week, if we want, we sit and have dinner,” she said. “It’s fun.”
While Abula is enjoying her time at IU, she hopes to return to her job at Windle Trust when she returns to South Sudan in June.
She said she loves teaching and wants to help the people of South Sudan.
“I am doing my research on conflict mitigation,” she said. “I feel that there is something else to be done.”
