Local Resident To Build Clinic For Sudan Village

HILLIARD, Ohio -- Most students at Darby lead pretty comfortable lives in the safety of suburban Hilliard. Adequate medical care seems like more of a right than a privilege, and it can be easy to forget that people in other countries do not always have the same access to such opportunities.

In an attempt to extend medical care to people abroad, local Hilliard resident Steve Walker is heading up a project to build a health-care clinic in Piol, Sudan, a village that witnessed incredible death and destruction during the Second Sudanese War.

The clinic is going to be built on behalf of two of Sudan’s lost boys, Jok and Bol, who fled Piol and managed to come to the United States in 2001 to further their educations at Ohio State.

The idea began after the boys returned to Africa a few years ago and told of the aftermath of their war-torn village. Walker heard the boys’ story and decided that he wanted to help in some way.

“What they identified their village needing most was better health clinics,” said Jenny Walker, Steve's wife. “In May of this year, Mr. Walker got in touch with a variety of people and told them the situation and that if they were interested, to meet at our house to talk things over.”

Initially, the idea to improve medical care was to purchase a bus for a nearby clinic that could visit the village often and transport medical supplies and personnel. However, this would prove to be impractical due to the rainy season in Sudan, which makes driving too difficult.

Finally, the solution was to simply build a new clinic right in the village.

“We concluded that we needed to have a building. We identified that it would be staffed with three people,” Jenny said. “The facility itself is not planned to be a hospital; it’s going to be a two-room clinic.”

This January, it is hoped that there will be enough funding to begin getting the project off the ground.

“[Hopefully,] three people will be able to go to the village in January for a few weeks to talk to select a sight and to get an endorsement of the people of the village. We’re hoping to begin building around January of 2011,” she said.

The project is being funded completely by donations.

“The fund-raising goal is around $300,000. The clinic will need solar panels for the power and a water treatment area,” Jenny said. “The building itself doesn’t cost a ton of money but getting it there, getting the people to build it, adds up.”

Donations are tax-deductible. If you are interested in donating to help the building of the clinic, mail them to Scioto Ridge United Methodist Church, 4343 Dublin Rd., Hilliard, OH 43026.

“I think when people hear the story of the Jok and Bol, it’s really powerful because they were 6 years old and were separated from their family. There is an understanding of how much we have and how much we have to share with the world, and it’s really exciting when you meet them and realize that this is such a worthwhile cause,” Jenny said.

This story first was written for Hilliard Darby's Panther Press and shared with NBC 4 as part of a media collaboration between school and the station.