OvG board member of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation

OvG published What is the What by Dave Eggers in 2007, at Lebowski Publishers, which is based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese child refugee who immigrated to the United States under the Lost Boys of Sudan program. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award. WITW got spectacular reviews and sold over 150.000 copies in Dutch translation. Dave & Valentino visited Holland in 2007 to promote the book, and Valentino returned to Holland twice: he was guest at the late night show of Paul de Leeuw and, in 2016, special guest at RTL Late Night when George Clooney was present to talk about Sudan. Clooney narrated and co-exutive produced ‘Sand And Sorrow: A New Documentary about Darfur’ is a 2007 American documentary film about the Darfur crisis.

OvG is now board member of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, and proudly so!

The cover of the paperback of What is the What was designed by Dog and Pony and was chosen best cover of 2010 in Holland.

The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation was established in connection to the book What Is The What, a novel by Dave Eggers based on Valentino’s early life story as a refugee from South Sudan. As a child in the 1980s, Valentino was separated from his family during Sudan’s long-running civil war, and grew up in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. In 2002, Valentino resettled in the United States in Atlanta, where he met Mary Williams, the daughter of Black Panther parents and head of the Lost Boys Foundation. After Valentino began telling his story to churches and community groups in Atlanta, he and Mary looked for a biographer to help him write a book. Mary got in touch with Dave, who agreed to write the book for free, deciding with Valentino early on that the future book’s proceeds should aid South Sudan.

Valentino and Dave became close friends, working for four years on the book. During that time, they traveled together to South Sudan, where Valentino reunited with his family after 16 years apart. He was overwhelmed by the difficulties his people were facing after decades of conflict, under-development, and suffering - caused in no small part by South Sudan’s historical lack of education and economic opportunities. Valentino, blessed with the opportunities he found in the United States, felt compelled to give back. He decided that the proceeds from the book should be used to create a new charitable cause, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to education for young people and promoting sustainable development in South Sudan. The VAD Foundation was established in 2006, shortly before the publication of What Is The What, and Valentino has led the organization ever since.

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