Juet Community Rehabilitation Services (JCRS) was founded by a group of “Lost Boys of Sudan” from Jalle Village in Bor County, Southern Sudan, who were resettled in the United States between 2000 and 2001. “The Lost Boys of the Sudan” are group of young children displaced by one of Africa’s longest civil wars between North Sudan (Muslim) and South Sudan (Christian), which claimed 2.5 million lives and displaced 4 million more.

      The name “Lost Boys” came from fictional characters in the story of Peter Pan and was adopted by aid workers because the boys were separated from their families in South Sudan in their early ages. Even though there were more than 26,000 lost boys in refugee camps in Ethiopia, the majority of them lost their lives throughout the journey from Sudan to Ethiopia, back again to Sudan, and from Sudan to Kenya. However, only 3,800 of those who made it to Kenya were given asylum by the United States. Of the 3,800 “Lost Boys” who were resettled in more than 25 states in the U.S., about 90 of them are from the village of Jalle (Juet Community).

     Sudan has not seen stability since gaining her independence from Great Britain and Egypt in 1956. The country has been caught in conflict of identity along ethnic, religious, and regional lines. The first war in the Sudan was fought from 1955 to 1972 and resumed again in 1983 to 2005. This was fought mainly between the Arab Muslims of the north and the Black Christians of the South. The current war in Darfur is a shift in religious alignment in the history of the conflict in the Sudan. For the first time, Muslims against Muslims go head to head in what has been labeled as genocide by the United States government. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between North and South in 2005 provided for a referendum in 2011 for Southerners to determine if they want to secede from the Sudan.

    With three and half times the size of the state of Texas, Sudan is the largest country in Africa, bordered by Egypt, Libya, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Red Sea. The world’s longest river, the Nile, runs through the heart of the country from Nimule, in South Sudan, to Wadi Halfa, in North Sudan, where it enters Egypt.