New York Times
Sudan’s Lost Boys Are Drawn Into War at Home
South Sudan — When Jacob Atem was just a young boy, his parents were killed during the long war for independence from Sudan, and he found himself among the legions of orphaned children known as the Lost Boys wandering hundreds of miles across this part of Africa...
USA Today
I was a 'lost boy' of Sudan and the US welcomed me. More refugees deserve that chance.
Every day is my birthday. I tell anyone who asks. Because, in fact, I don’t know the date I was born, only the year. I realized shortly after coming to the U.S. that, since people were nice to you on your birthday, I could say that every day was my birthday and people would always be nice to me…
NPR
How A Lost Boy From Sudan Found His True Calling In The U.S.
Baltimore's Stoop Stories is a 12-year-old live show and podcast wherein people from all walks of life tell their tales. The premise is simple: Everyone has a story. But then few have one as horrific, heartbreaking — and ultimately inspiring — as the one told by Jacob Atem, who was born in the part of Sudan that is now the independent country of South Sudan and who is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Humanitarian Health…
BBC News
Sudan's 'Lost Boys' get caught in their country's violence once again
Two decades ago, he was one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," part of that wave of Sudanese war orphans who wandered through East Africa in the 1990's, fleeing the civil war in southern Sudan. Atem, like many of his peers, resettled in the US. He worked his way through college, graduated from Michigan State University and became an American citizen…
Johns Hopkins Magazine
South Sudanese "Lost Boy" to Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Humanitarian Health
In Maar, South Sudan, my job was to wake up at dawn and take my family’s goats and cows to find grass and water. One morning in 1991, I was caring for the animals when I heard gunfire and screaming. When I ran to see what happened, I saw my village on fire. The rebel forces from Northern Sudan had invaded, and I knew that my family members had either been killed or taken into slavery. I was 6 years old...
Global Health Now
“Lost Boys” Find Home
Jacob Atem was among 30,000 “lost boys” left behind after government militias decimated their villages in now-independent South Sudan. The US took in some 3,800, including Atem in 2001, offering an invaluable—and increasingly scarce—opportunity….