Campaign members Madeline Thaden and Tracy Baumgardt  (fresh U. of M. graduates -- Thaden with a bachelor's in global studies, Baumgardt with a master's in public policy) arrived just in D.C. Monday afternoon on June 2 and will spend the week meetings with key congressional aides and NGOs. Campaign member Hilary Duerksen paved their way with newsletters addressed to those congressional offices and more.

Members went to Washington, D.C. for a second time (the first being the November visit when, with support from the local delegation, they landed a meeting with South Sudan President Salva Kiir and pressured him into taking action that at least paused child abductions).  They this time around are forming a specific request to the U.S. government to assist the Jonglei area in South Sudan that  is the epicenter of the abductions.

The two member who left from Minnesota, Baumgardt and Thaden's goal is to lay the foundation for a congressional briefing that the Office of Rep. Betty McCollum has agreed to sponsor in late July. At that briefing we will give a presentation to congressional officials about how systemic child abduction centered in Jonglei fits into the context of Sudan's better-known conflicts in Darfur and Abyei; and how the U.S. can improve the situation in Jonglei with targeted diplomatic and development resources.
University of Minnesota students joined to help a classmate, Gabriel Kou Solomon,  whose nieces were abducted in South Sudan in October 2007, the Human Rights Program (HRP) incubated the student effort and helped them move into international advocacy. 

Within a month, the “Save Yar Campaign” sent students to Washington, D.C., where they obtained a rare meeting with South Sudan’s president that led to security improvements on the ground.  Yar and Ajak Mading, the nieces of U. of M. graduate student Gabriel Kou Solomon, remain missing, and hopes of finding them in the vast and unpatrolled spaces of rural southeast Sudan are slim.  But the Save Yar Campaign has given Solomon and his classmates a framework to channel that tragedy into lasting change.
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Source: save-yar.org