Aluong Garang believes that building a few cinder block walls and a tin roof could help redeem an entire country.

Mr. Garang was just 9 years old when Sudanese government soldiers burned down his home and stole his family's cattle -- its only livelihood -- in 1986. He joined more than 20,000 other "Lost Boys of Sudan" who walked hundreds of miles over the desert while facing starvation, animal attacks and disease during their treks to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.

About half those children died along the way, and the other half spent the remainder of their childhoods in refugee camps. Most lost their parents and other family members to Sudan's civil war.

Now a grown man with a college education, a job and a home in Pittsburgh for the past seven years, Mr. Garang is working to build a simple school in his home village in Duk (pronounced "duke") County, Sudan. If his village had a school, he said, it would help peace come to Sudan.

"Educated people will have a solution other than war, and children will no longer just be looking after cattle," Mr. Garang said in a soft voice. "They will understand the world."

Mr. Garang, a lanky man with a gentle smile, was one of 10 "lost boys" and girls -- many now with children of their own -- who met with several dozen members of St. Thomas More Church in Bethel Park yesterday to discuss his plans for building a school in Sudan, under a project called "River Nile Villages."

Students in Duk, he said, now study their lessons under a tree, so they must go home when it rains. With torrential downpours a daily event during the rainy season between April and July, school is a sometime affair.

A simple building that's sturdy enough to protect them from the elements "will transform their lives," he said.

But even simple construction in Sudan, where building materials are nearly nonexistent, isn't cheap. Materials will have to be purchased in the United States and shipped to Kenya, then loaded onto tractor-trailers and trucked into Sudan. Customs duties, laborers and other costs will have to be paid along the way. Costs for the school are estimated at $80,000 to $100,000.

Since beginning fund raising last year, Mr. Garang and several other "lost boys" living in Pittsburgh have raised $10,000 of that sum, and they have been visiting church groups in an effort to raise the rest.

"Without the help of the people in the United States, it will not happen," he said. "The government in Sudan, they have never done anything good for the people."

When John Dau, another "lost boy" who ultimately resettled in Syracuse, N.Y., opened a medical clinic in Duk in May 2007, it was the region's first medical facility, he told church members yesterday.

For the first time, Mr. Dau said, women are receiving prenatal and postnatal care and delivering their babies in a clinic that notes their children's birth dates and places. People are being treated for malaria, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and potentially blinding eye diseases that otherwise force productive family members to stay home to provide care.

At the clinic, he said, the same doctors treat patients from all classes, tribes, religions and political parties, creating a common bond in a country where so many ties have been cut. Thanks to Americans who donated money to build the clinic, Mr. Dau said, "it's place where peace is restored."

"These other countries, they colonized Africa and then they left and they never looked back to help," he said. "America is wealthy, sure, but it's not keeping it to itself -- it's sharing that wealth."

For more information about Aluong Garang's school project, write to 2412 Bethel Church Road, Bethel Park 15102 or call 412-831-5308.