Turning Bullets into Ballots
Bringing peace to Sudan
In the cattle camps and desert villages of Sudan, people have never seen an election before. They’re used to disputes being settled by bullets not ballots, and they’re used to power depending on force. They don’t understand how or why voting will help them, or that politicians may use violence to win.
For Top, these elections aren’t about democracy. They’re a matter of life or death.
Top heard of a group looking for people to help run peaceful elections. For seven hours he walked across sweltering desert, guided by the promise of a future for his children.
When he reached the group, he was trained and given a election backpack. The backpack is what Top and the other election mobilisers carry with them as they travel around the villages of Sudan. Inside is everything they need to teach people in these remote places what voting means.
There’s a megaphone for holding meetings at waterholes, posters to put up in marketplaces, and cassettes to play stories about how and why to vote. There’s a torch for travelling on country roads at night and a camping mat for sleeping rough. And everywhere they go, by bicycle or on foot, they hand out leaflets that explain how voting offers a new start for their country.
It costs just £200 to fill the backpack, and in the last three months Top and his team have travelled to towns and villages in four counties.
And this project is just one of many run under the umbrella of a partnership called the Collaborative for Peace. This is the only network of local peacebuilders that works across the line between North and South Sudan.
Together the Collaborative are reaching people across the country and building the foundations for a peaceful future. And you can help Top, and others like him, to bring peace to Sudan and security for all of their children.
