Gabriel Akech Kwai was born in 1979 in Bor, Southern Sudan. At the age of seven, his father was murdered by the government in Khartoum, the capitol of Northern Sudan. Civil war soon wracked the country, and the government eventually attacked Bor in 1987. The turmoil separated Kwai from his family, and he traveled alone to Ethiopia with 33,000 other parentless children who became known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”

In 1991, the Ethiopian government ordered Kwai and the other refugees to leave the country within 24 hours of the announcement. While traveling to Kenya, Ethiopian militias attacked them, killing 5,000 in one day. Kwai eventually found safety in a camp in Kenya, where he lived for nine years and received his elementary and high school education.

In 2001, the United States Congress allowed 4,000 “Lost Boys” to travel to America for settlement.

Kwai left Kenya with the first of the 4,000.

He is a recent graduate from Murray State University in Murray, Ky. He has made the Women’s Educational Empowerment Project for Sudan part of his vision to give the women in his country a chance for education and a better life just as Congress provided one for him.