13 years have passed since the State of Israel deported the South Sudanese refugee community, including five hundred children, to a devastated and hunger-stricken country plagued by malaria-carrying mosquitoes and contaminated water. A country where 12-year-old girls are forced into marriage just to secure food, and boys their age are recruited into armed militias. Less than a year later, a brutal civil war erupted, claiming more than 400,000 lives to date.
The fate of these children, who only months earlier had been our students, our neighbors and our children’s friends, moved a group of Israeli citizens to establish the Come True Project. Our goal was simple yet essential: to bring the children back to school. Education, we believe, is the key to breaking the cycle of displacement and giving these children and their community a chance at a better future.
Over the past 13 years, thanks to your support, we have provided education and a safe living environment to more than 350 deported South Sudanese children, placed in boarding schools in Uganda, South Sudan’s neighbor.
Today, the project has over 100 graduates. Bright and determined young adults who are now building meaningful, independent lives and uplifting their families and community with them. Among them are engineers, a pilot, a social worker, a journalist, a midwife and a spokesperson. Others are pursuing graduate degrees in psychology, public policy, economics and international relations.
None of this would have been possible without Come True. Without the project, these children, raised in Israel and then deported, would have had no opportunity to escape the cycle of displacement, suffering and despair.
Yet the challenges of the past two years have dealt a severe blow to the project. Many of our longtime Israeli supporters have faced financial hardships due to the war, while others have needed to redirect their giving to other urgent causes. At the same time, international aid to refugees in East Africa has been sharply reduced following shifts in US policy, causing a collapse in living conditions across the region. Many families of our students have fallen into extreme hunger.
As a result, the Come True Project is now in a crisis that will prevent us from opening the next school year in February 2026.
We are therefore launching an emergency campaign through December 31, 2025. Its goal is to prevent the closure of the project, to enable the current school year to end with dignity, and to secure a modest opening of the coming school year in February. Throughout 2026, we will work tirelessly to raise additional support, with the hope of restoring the project to its current capacity and ensuring the education of all our students.
A full annual scholarship for one student costs 1,600 USD per year, or 135 USD per month.
Any recurring monthly donation, even 20 USD, helps us keep a child in school.
Every donation matters. Every act of support counts.
Please join us. Share this campaign with friends and colleagues, spread the word, and help us continue the life-saving work that has sustained a community for thirteen years and offers a real path out of the cycle of displacement.
