Rachel Beck, 17, is late. She's been flapping around in the rain in her earth shoes, posting fliers around Squirrel Hill with Allison Zionts, 16.

They take a seat in the dusty old second-floor library of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. Before long, Anna Thorpe joins them. A housewife from the North Side, Thorpe has a friend and two young daughters in tow.

Beck, Zionts and Thorpe are accidental activists, drawn into a growing international fervor to respond to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

They've joined hands with a few old-guard peace activists, including Molly Rush, former longtime leader of the Thomas Merton Center.

About a year ago, as mainstream media reported on the rising violence in Sudan, the peace veterans created the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition. On Sunday, the group will march in Squirrel Hill to raise public awareness.

Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the world seen such slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement. At least 200,000 people are estimated to have died in the Darfur conflict. More than 1.6 million people have been displaced and more than 200,000 have fled across the border to Chad.

The U.S. Congress declared the killings in Darfur "genocide," and President Bush has been urged to respond.

The roots of the conflict reach back centuries but grew sharper when the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1956. It pitted northerners vs. southerners; herdsmen vs. farmers; Muslim vs. animists and Christians; and Arabs vs. black Africans. Over time, it broadened to disputes over oil, land and politics.

Most people run from such issues. But not Beck, Zionts, Thorpe and a few other students.

In December, Beck read an article on the escalating troubles in Darfur. A few weeks later, she learned more about Sudan at a teen conference in Washington, D.C. Around the same time, Zionts, a musical theater major at Creative and Performing Arts High School, was grappling with the issue. "I just couldn't watch things happen," she said. "Otherwise, it will snowball into something bigger."

Both studied Web sites and shared information with friends, few of whom could identify Darfur.

Beck, a junior at Schenley High School, wants to start a club at school to promote awareness of the issue.

"I consider myself to be an activist-in-training," she said. "I mean you have to help people or the situation just gets worse."

Thorpe, 38, of Observatory Hill, was spurred to action in October after a report on CBS' "60 Minutes" left her shaken. "It took my breath away," she said. "My husband and I decided that we could not do nothing."

Since then, Thorpe has pored over Web sites and gone to lectures and meetings to further educate herself.

In December, she hosted a seminar at her North Side church, allowing few to leave until they took time to learn about Darfur.

Thorpe was unprepared for how Darfur touched her so deeply, so quickly. She had done community outreach through her church, but this issue "just took me somewhere else," she said. "I think about it every day. The men. The women. The children. I feel compelled to do something."

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition and STAND, "Students Taking Action Now: Darfur," the Walk for Peace in Darfur begins at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Community Day School, 6424 Beechwood Blvd. Marchers will walk to Church of the Redeemer at 5700 Forbes Ave., where there will be a community forum. For information on the march, call 412-371-9447; on the crisis, visit www.savedarfur.org