From left, Danny Richmond of Va?ad Tikun Olam, CHAT students Heather Douglas and Lauren Silver, Acol Dor of CASTS, students Beckie Cherniak and Michael Herman, and Jonathan Laski of STAND Canada.

Acol Dor, a Sudanese-born physician whose warmth and ready smile belie the horrors she witnessed as a child, described her experiences for a rapt audience last week at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto’s Tanenbaum campus in Downsview.

Dor, the co-director of Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan (CASTS), joined Danny Richmond, assistant national program director of Canadian Young Judaea and director of the organization’s Va’ad Tikun Olam, and Jonathan Laski, director of media for STAND Canada (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) to speak at a school-wide assembly organized by a committee of students as part of the school’s annual “awareness week.”

This year’s event focused on the situation in Africa in four main areas of concern: AIDS, poverty, child soldiers and genocide. The assembly was part of a week-long program including a coffeehouse fundraiser for War Child Canada, (an organization that helps children affected by war), lunchtime presentations, and an NGO (non-governmental organization) fair.

“I don’t want somebody to go through what I went through,” said Dor. Her happiness as a seven-year-old child was shattered when she witnessed soldiers rape her sister and torture and maim her father before killing him.

Beckie Cherniak – a member of the organizing committee along with fellow students Heather Douglas, Michael Herman and Lauren Silver – wrote an impassioned e-mail to The CJN prior to the assembly, indicating the strong feelings behind the undertaking.

“How can we as Jews say ‘never again’ in a few weeks on Yom Hashoah when there is a genocide taking place right now in Sudan, festering into Chad?” she asked.

“How can we stand by when 14 million children will be left orphaned throughout Africa when 2.6 million people die from AIDS just this year in Africa?”

Richmond, who worked at a children’s centre in Ghana last summer, kicked off the assembly with some background on Africa. Among the statistics he cited, he said that more than 100,000 child soldiers in Africa were being forced to fight. Every night, he said, 40,000 children in Northern Uganda leave their homes and travel for kilometres on foot to avoid being abducted. “We must do something to help them.”

He urged students to educate themselves and others. “Before understanding the solutions, you must understand the problems,” he said. “Read books, watch the news, go hear speakers, watch films that focus on important issues, [then] put your knowledge into action… [through] fundraising and advocacy. Use your minds, your unstoppable passion and your creativity.”

Laski said the world has done “almost nothing” to help people in Darfur, in western Sudan, where 400,000 have been killed by violence, malnutrition and disease, and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes by people burning their villages.

The “unfortunate truth,” he said, is that “we create a culture of excuses including distance and busy lives.

“Make the [politicians’] phones ring,” exhorted Laski, who was part of a delegation to Ottawa last year to lobby then prime minister Paul Martin about the Darfur issue.

The audience has a “special responsibility” as Canadians, students and Jewish people to address the issues, he said. A recent graduate of the University of Western Ontario, Laski said “people really do listen to students.” His organization offers resources so that students can become involved in lobbying government and media, as well as organizing fundraisers.

The original article appeared in the on-line edition of the Canadian Jewish News, and was copied with permission.