CAP Profile
Peter escaped from the Christian village of Akot in Southern Sudan as a young child when Islamic forces from the north invaded and burned down the hut in which he lived with his family. Peter fled with thousands of other young boys who walked for weeks traveling first into Sudan, and on to Kenya before finding refuge at Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Here he lived for nine years in a tent with six other orphaned boys, subsisting on a single bowl of corn meal a day.
When Peter was chosen to come to the U.S. as part of a relief effort in 2001, his dream was to go to school and eventually to work for a pharmaceutical company helping to develop vaccines against world diseases such as AIDS. Peter, like the other Lost Boys of Sudan, arrived in this country with full responsibility for his rent and living expenses, and an $850 debt to the U.S. government for his airfare. The only way for him to make ends meet was to work full-time. For two years, Peter worked a full-time night shift job as a security guard for Novartis Pharmaceuticals while attending school during the day on little or no sleep. His budget for food was $20 per month. Remarkably, Peter was able to earn an associate degree in Biomedical Engineering and Technology from Franklin Institute.
Peter is currently in his fourth year of a five-year Biotechnology and Engineering degree program at Northeastern University. FOS's College Assistance Program supports him by providing guidance and mentoring, and by subsidizing the costs of tuition, rent, and health care coverage while he is in school so that he has time to focus on his studies. Over the past two years, Peter has held part-time jobs at Beth Israel Hospital as a lab technician, and at Harvard University as a security guard to cover his other living costs.
With your support, FOS hopes to be able to continue to assist Peter as he works to realize his dream of a career working to improve world health.
