While the world’s attention is focused on weapons of mass destruction, the global trade in conventional arms continues its death march. Is it not time to stop the bleeding, to stop exporting weapons and war and to replace them with help and with hope?

Since independence in 1953, Sudan – the largest country in Africa – has suffered from strife of every description, including genocide in Darfur. Southern Sudan, far from Darfur in the west, has been out of the war news recently, but the region saw civil war for 22 years until 2005. A peace treaty was signed then, in January, and the peace is holding. Refugees who had dispersed to nearby countries and around the world are starting to return. What they are finding is devastation, but also hope the future can be different.

Abraham Awolich left a refugee camp in Kenya in 2001 and arrived in Burlington, Vt. – about as far from Sudan as he could have imagined! Now a graduate of the University of Vermont, he is co-director of the New Sudan Education Initiative, which aims to build 20 new secondary schools in his native southern Sudan. The first school will be constructed in the town of Yei, starting next month.

Why secondary schools? UNICEF and other organizations are building primary schools, but graduates have few places to continue their education and, as Awolich’s organization puts it, “you can’t run a country on an eighth-grade education.”

Robert Lair of Vermont’s St. Michael’s College says, “It is hard to imagine anyplace else in the world with a more desperate need for education. We believe this is the key to peace in southern Sudan. If there is no peace in southern Sudan, there will be no peace in Darfur.”

The key to this venture is that it is not the top-down creation of Americans or international agencies. Rather, it is the brainchild of Sudanese themselves, in Vermont, in Maine, throughout the United States, and the global diaspora. Some 25,000 Sudanese now live in 43 U.S. cities. That many of them will turn their backs on bright futures here to help build their country speaks volumes of their commitment.

The vision of the New Sudan Education Initiative is to eliminate illiteracy, to strengthen the foundations of a lasting peace, and to change a culture of war and violence to one of freedom and opportunity. Because these are seen as leadership academies, the larger schools will emphasize health sciences, teacher training, sustainable agriculture, business and government. And essential to changing the culture, the schools will provide courses in peace studies, conflict transformation, and gender studies.

Teachers will be recruited from within Sudan and from the diaspora. Sudanese will be in charge, but Americans are encouraged to volunteer in the schools, inasmuch as Sudanese and Americans working together comprise the basis of the initiative. Special scholarships will be given to disadvantaged children, including orphans, returning refugees, former child soldiers, and girls.

Girls? For a variety of reasons, girls in Sudan attend secondary schools at a low rate, so NESEI will build primary schools for girls on each academy campus.

Also on the vision board are peace building, economic development, health care services, the reduction of poverty, and a micro-lending program for academy graduates to enable them to begin projects in their communities.

What can be done to help these people realize their big plans? Will we export hope instead of howitzers? Will we enable dreams and make a new life possible?

The New Sudan Education Initiative does not depend solely on New Englanders, but it does depend especially on Americans. Where are our priorities? According to polls, most Americans disagree with our Iraq policy, yet the nation is spending something like $2 billion there every week. The $20 million it would cost to fully fund the Sudan schools project amounts to 1 percent of each Iraq installment. The comparison is shameful.

Nyapeni Doul, a Sudanese woman living in Portland, is an NESEI board member. She says, “If you get an education, it lets you see how other people are living. Otherwise, you will never change.” It is within our power to be agents of change.

Kent Price of Orland is president of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine. For more information, visit NESEI.org. To make a contribution, send a check payable to NESEI to New Sudan Education Initiative, P.O. Box 65, Winooski VT 05404.