Rocky Mountain Refugee Outpost

Aug. 15, 2006 — -- After spending years fleeing the violence of her homeland in southern Sudan, an 18-year-old refugee gets a new start in America, thanks to an interfaith effort in Colorado.

At the age of 3, Susan Nadai Moi was separated from her family and was taken in by a group of adults also fleeing to safety. They ended up in Ethiopia, but after two years were told to leave the refugee camp and made their way to Kenya.

Moi is considered a "lost girl" -- a young, orphaned Sudanese refugee. In the late 1990s, 4,000 lost boys were allowed to resettle in the United States as thousands of girls went unnoticed.

Nearly two years ago, Rabbi Deborah Bronstein heard about the lost girls in a letter from a friend and challenged her small congregation in faraway Boulder, Colo., to do something.

Bronstein said that because we're "all created in the image of God," when anyone hurts, "we have to step forward."

"There was an incredible volunteer response," said Becky O'Brien, Congregation Har HaShem's genocide response team coordinator. "So many of our members came forward and said, 'What can we do? We want to help.'"

Volunteers from Boulder synagogues and a Lutheran charity spent months navigating red tape, arranging to bring refugees to Colorado through a Catholic missionary in Kenya. You can read more about their program here.

They found homes, medical care and education for the girls, with Moi the first to arrive.

"I want to go to school. Then I want to do work," Moi said.

One volunteer noted, "Three people are moving in here, and it's going to change their lives completely."

Moi arrived from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya where there was no hot water and little comfort. Orphaned Sudanese girls were placed with foster families, which treated them like unpaid slaves. They were frequently abused, and even raped.

"You are given food, like a small amount for two weeks. And then you have to struggle every day," said former lost girl Micklina Pia Peters, who also lives in Boulder and helped welcome Moi when she arrived.