Dave Eggers' school 'is changing Sudanese lives'
3rd August 2010
Author
Dave Eggers believes that his work to build a school in south
Sudan has been 'life-changing' for its pupils.
The A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius writer told the
Guardian that he never expected to start the project when
he first met Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng seven years
ago.
However, Eggers was so taken with Achak Deng's suffering during
the Sudanese civil war that he turned his story into the
bestselling novel What Is
The What and the two formed a lasting friendship.
They also vowed to use the money raised by the book to help
rejuvenate Achak Deng's hometown of Marial Bai and were told by the
community's elders that a secondary school is what the town needed
most.
Commenting on the school's first year, Eggers told the
newspaper: 'Now students are coming from hundreds of miles around
to attend the school and this is an essential development to the
rebuilding of south Sudan.'
In April, the author won the Los Angeles Times'
inaugural innovators award for founding more than 800 literacy
centres for at-risk children and managing independent publishing
house McSweeney's.