‘Home, a song for Sudan’ is a call to action to help people fleeing violence in Khartoum get to safety and to enable the provision of online and onsite mental health support for displaced youth and families.

My name is Juanita Rea. Sudan was my home from 2018 - 2020 when I was a school teacher and wellbeing volunteer at Khartoum International Community School, which is when I initiated Design For Change (DFC) Sudan (dfcworld.org/Sudan) to to empower youth leadership.

The onslaught of daily hardship in Sudan broke my heart open. Political oppression. Environmental degradation. Poverty. Rape of natural resources by despots and international ‘investors.’ Roads that become rivers when it rains. Shops with intermittent supplies. Petrol queues that people sit in for hours. Power cuts. Rising costs of bread. Military rule. Yet in all my time in Sudan, I did not meet a single violent Sudanese person. Instead, the Sudanese are the most peaceful and resilient people who are holding on to hope for a peaceful, democratic, prosperous Sudan to emerge from this fight for power between two warlords and fuelled by warmongers.


After weeks of exposure to unprecedented violence that has been destroying their city and feeling rising fear as bombs and missiles got closer to their homes, every single one of my former colleagues and students have been displaced. My friends fled their homes with the clothes on their backs and with what their arms could hold. Some made it out with the sound of bombs still echoing and some still need help to get to safety.


In 2019 I wrote ‘Home, a song for Sudan’ after the Khartoum massacre of 118 civilians and the rape of 70 unarmed peaceful protestors. It is being released here now on Bandcamp for song sales and donations to our fundraising campaign on Givengain to be used to:

Evacuate members of our DFC Sudan community
Support others who I know of (through my friends) to get to safety
Provide mental health activities for displaced people to aide the trauma release, self-compassion and healing needed when rebuilding their lives

Two of our DFC Sudan freelancers who fled Khartoum need support. Ayman Mohammed is a freelance videographer/graphic designer stuck in a village en-route to Ethiopia and Marina George is a teacher rebuilding her life in Cairo. They have directly empowered Sudanese youth from 2019 - 2021 to lead community projects addressing environmental and social issues. My friends at my former school know of others who need help to get to safety. Ayman and Marina, while needing to address personal difficulty, are both eager to work to offer online and onsite mental health support for displaced youth and families


‘Home, a song for Sudan’ is a call to action. If you can, buy the song for £2 and donate more on Givengain (www.givengain.com/cc/help-sudanese-youth-and-families-displaced-by-current-war/). All proceeds (less transaction fees) go directly to support our DFC Sudan (and wider) community get to safety and to provide mental health support for displaced youth and families.