Abubacar Sultan
Between 1985 and 1992, Mozambique was torn apart by civil war. Children were forced to fight as soldiers, seeing their homes and families ripped apart by social conflict that claimed the lives of many they had once held dear. During this time, teacher in training and Mozambique native Abubacar Sultan was brought back news by friends and fellow colleagues of the harrowing atrocities committed by a war-torn society, and he decided that it was time to take action. Sultan traveled across Africa to rescue the children that had been affected by the war, he trained over five hundred people in community-based therapies. He met a seven year old boy who had been kidnapped from his home, he was touched by the child's story "he shared with me the worst moments of his life. The images, the bad images I had from my childhood of small things that hurt me, all came alive."
Sultan started the Children and War project in 1988, it was very successful and still is today. There main goals were to protect children and young people against the consequences of armed conflict, to enable children's access to education, to ensure that children have access to justice when their rights are violated, to build sustainable communities that address children's fundamental rights, and to stimulate their social development. He developed the organization Wona Sanana, which is a Mozambican NGO that promotes active learning and integrated development of children. He also worked with The United Nations Children's Fund, their goal is to save and improve children's lives by providing health care and immunization, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, and emergency relief. "Among the most basic needs we wanted to provide for the kids was access to water, food, and to simple medicine in order to fight the spread of malnutrition, malaria, cholera, and other diseases" Sultan said in a speech.
Sultan and the people that he worked faced many obstacles which included them putting their lives on the line everyday to help those children. They were constantly in danger, there were no safe roads they had to travel by plane "on several occasions, we were almost shot down" they had gotten in several plane accidents, and the airstrips that they would land on were heavily swept with mines. Even though Sultan's program reunited about 20,000 children with their families out of the quarter million who were orphaned or lost during the war. Sultan and his colleagues felt they were spending too much money and not making a big enough difference. Sultan was awarded the Kellogg’s children Development Award in 2001 because of those 20,000 children that he did help, even though he couldn't save all of the children he still made a huge impact on many children's lives.
Sultan started the Children and War project in 1988, it was very successful and still is today. There main goals were to protect children and young people against the consequences of armed conflict, to enable children's access to education, to ensure that children have access to justice when their rights are violated, to build sustainable communities that address children's fundamental rights, and to stimulate their social development. He developed the organization Wona Sanana, which is a Mozambican NGO that promotes active learning and integrated development of children. He also worked with The United Nations Children's Fund, their goal is to save and improve children's lives by providing health care and immunization, clean water and sanitation, nutrition, education, and emergency relief. "Among the most basic needs we wanted to provide for the kids was access to water, food, and to simple medicine in order to fight the spread of malnutrition, malaria, cholera, and other diseases" Sultan said in a speech.
Sultan and the people that he worked faced many obstacles which included them putting their lives on the line everyday to help those children. They were constantly in danger, there were no safe roads they had to travel by plane "on several occasions, we were almost shot down" they had gotten in several plane accidents, and the airstrips that they would land on were heavily swept with mines. Even though Sultan's program reunited about 20,000 children with their families out of the quarter million who were orphaned or lost during the war. Sultan and his colleagues felt they were spending too much money and not making a big enough difference. Sultan was awarded the Kellogg’s children Development Award in 2001 because of those 20,000 children that he did help, even though he couldn't save all of the children he still made a huge impact on many children's lives.