When Stephen Deng was 11 years old in 1985 he crossed the border from war torn Sudan into Ethiopia, becoming one of tens of thousands of Lost Boys, children displaced or left orphaned by civil war. Now he has graduated from the Calgary Police Auxiliary Cadet Program hoping to steer local Sudanese youth away from becoming lost boys within Canadian society.
Calgary saw murders within the Sudanese community earlier this year along with well publicized incidents involving seemingly unsupervised East African youth harassing other tenants of the Shaganappi Village complex this summer. It’s his goal to be a link between the lost youth and the police.
Former Lost Boy of Sudan, now a Calgary Police Cadet Program graduate, Stephen Deng, speaks with the Herald Thursday July 23, 2015 about his experiences and the challenges of fitting into Canadian society. On his forehead are the marks of gaar, a Sudanese transition to manhood.
He says, “It is my dream to work with youth. I hope there will be people who want to be like Stephen tomorrow. I want those young people to think that they can be a role model tomorrow, not a drug dealer. We need to give them opportunities because if they are bad today Calgary will be bad tomorrow because some of them will be on the street killing people.”
“It’s a community that needs to be educated. They come from a country that has never been a country before and education is not a big thing. We need them to be empowered. We need them to be encouraged.”
Another of his goals, now realized, was to spearhead outreach at the Calgary Sudanese Community Association. On a hot night this summer some 20 South Sudanese discuss issues facing their youth, joblessness among them. One man points out the language barrier. ”The children speak English the parents speak Nuer.”
Stephen says it is an important forum for families.
“It is a centre where we can get together and talk about our culture because ours is a very collective culture. And it is a culture that if we sit together we encourage ourselves. We discourage the bad behavior of the youth.”
Sergeant Clare Smart of the Calgary Police watched with pride as Deng marched with other cadets during the graduation ceremonies at HMS Tecumseh. She is both friend and mentor to Stephen, and even took him to Ethiopia where he was able to meet his mother for the first time since fleeing many years ago.
“He’s so humble he treats everybody as equals and with respect. And that’s a great quality we want to see in police and cadets. I’m hoping for the youth in Calgary from the Sudanese community that he can be that role model that they look up to and see that anything is achievable.”
