Valentino Achak Deng Biography

Southern Sudan (now South Sudan village) of Marial Bai is where Valentino was born. His community was destroyed by murahaleena, the same local army that currently threatens the Darfur region of Sudan when he escaped common war-torn Sudan in the late 1980s during the second Sudanese common war when he was seven or eight years old. Deng spent nine years working for the UNHCR as a social promoter and conceptive well-being instructor in evacuee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. He traveled to Ethiopia on foot with 30000 children, but he was one of only 10000 children to complete the journey before having to flee once more to a refugee camp in Kenya. One of the last lost young men allowed escape, he relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, in 2001. Deng has spoken to audiences in the US about his time in South Sudan, his time as a refugee, and his collaboration with author Dave Eggers on the novelization of his life story, What Is the What. Deng promotes universal access to education as an entrepreneur in the South Sudanese diaspora. In order to aid in the reconstruction of the South Sudanese people group, Deng and Eggers established the VAD Foundation in 2006. He oversaw more than 800 state-run schools while serving as Northern Bahr el Ghazal's Minister of Education in 2015. In addition to overseeing the VAD Foundation's optional school (Merial Bai Secondary School), Valentino currently serves as Black Rhino's vice president of corporate social responsibility (The Blackstone Group).

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