Former Sudanese Lost Girl Rebecca Deng shares with IRD’s Faith McDonnell about her life at Kakuma Refugee Camp after fleeing from her home in South Sudan, and about how God providentially saved her from an early arranged marriage, and brought her to the United States where she fulfilled her lifelong dream to go to school.
View Part One by clicking here.
About Rebecca:
Rebecca Deng, of South Sudan’s Dinka tribe, is one of the eighty-nine Lost Girls who came to the United States in 2000 as a refugee after living eight years in Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya. The violence she experienced as a child during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005) has given her a deep empathy for children and young adults who face similar situations today. She became a US citizen in 2006.
Today Rebecca is an international speaker and advocate for women and children who have been traumatized and victimized by war. She has spoken at the United Nations and served as a Refugee Congress delegate at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Washington DC. She also led a sixty-five person team of referendum workers at the 2011 Out of the Country Voting Center for the South Sudanese Independence Referendum. She worked with the American Bible Society’s Mission Trauma Healing program, formerly called She’s My Sister.
Rebecca speaks Dinka and English. She has a bachelor’s in international development from Calvin College and a master’s in Organizational/ministry leadership from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. She studied in Thailand with International Sustainable Development Studies Institute (ISDSI) and volunteered in a refugee camp for Burmese families, after which she got her foster family’s neighborhood involved in a project to sponsor hill-tribes-minorities refugees from that area.
She is a mother and resides with her family in Holland, Michigan, and attends Pillar Church. She loves traveling, hiking, good conversation, and international cuisine.
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