Salva Dut

My Hero Project Salva Dut 

Salva is the founder of Water for South Sudan, building wells in Sudan. He does this because when he was a child they had to walk for miles each day just to get dirty muddy water. This led to a lot of people getting sick and some even dying. His story inspires me because he also had to escape his village at a very young age due to war. He is a hero to me because he has helped many lives.

Salva was born on December 1 1974, he is now 49 years old. At only 11 years old he had to escape his village into the bush along with a lot of other villages nearby. They walked and walked through desert, swamp, and forests, even getting left behind all alone because they didn’t want the trouble of having a child with them. He even lost a friend Mirial and his uncle while making the journey to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. 

In Ethiopia the camp got overcrowded so they were forced to flee to another camp. Salva being one of the older boys had to lead a large group called “the lost boys”. They traveled to a camp in Kenya where they lived for around 4 years. One day Salva was invited to come to America, the trip amazed them from flying on a plane to even just packaged food and soda. When he arrived in Rochester, New York he wondered why they gave him lots of layers until he went outside and was surprised by the cold air, he had never felt temperatures below around 20 degrees Celsius.

In America, he got an email saying his dad was sick and having surgery, so Salva went out of his way to find out where his dad was being held. After a long process, he was finally able to see his dad, later he found out his dad had gotten sick from the water he had been drinking all his life. This sparked an idea in Salva’s brain to build wells in South Sudan, because having clean water is very important. You can get very sick and die, there are many stomach diseases that can occur from dirty contaminated water. So when he got back to America he started to raise money and built his first well in his family's village. It took a lot of hard work and money but it eventually worked, they had clean water.

As you can see Salva has had a very rough life, especially when he just had to keep walking. In the end, it all worked out and he is now living happily. Salva has saved many lives and he has worked hard to accomplish all that he has done in life. He never gave up and he always persevered. A quote from Salva that shows how he got through all that

“Stay calm when things are hard or not going right with you. You will get through it when you persevere instead of quitting.”