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Liberty teen recognized for efforts to aid Darfur
“I have always been up on foreign policies and affairs. I have been raised in a family where news is important, and I will probably go into some type of human rights law.”
Julia Aromatorio
Liberty junior
The group hopes to buy a well for refugees in the Darfur region.
LIBERTY — Liberty High School junior Julia Aromatorio, 16, spends every day in classes, but her heart is thousands of miles away in a country many Americans know little about.
At Liberty High School, Julia founded Global Action and Awareness to help the People of Darfur. The group has been dedicated to raising funds for and increasing awareness about the situation in the Darfur region of the Western Sudan.
The Darfur genocide is a military conflict. Unlike the Second Sudanese Civil War, the current lines of conflict are seen to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious.
One side of the armed conflict is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Baggara tribes of the northern Rizeigat, camel-herding nomads. The other side comprises a variety of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the land-tilling non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit ethnic groups.
Now, Julia is being recognized by a major company for her charitable efforts in trying to help refugees left with little in the middle of the conflict.
In 2004, Build-A-Bear Workshop launched the Huggable Heroes program, each year searching for and recognizing young people making a difference in their communities. Huggable Heroes are young leaders who demonstrate strong levels of kindness, compassion and leadership to help make the world a better place.
From Dec. 7 through Feb. 8, Build-A-Bear Workshop accepted nominations for Huggable Heroes, and Julia was nominated by one of her teachers. Nominations have been narrowed down to a field of 120 semifinalists, including her. Later this month, 31 finalists will be named. Those finalists will again be narrowed down to determine the 12 Huggable Heroes, to which Julia hopes to be included.
Julia is a seemingly happy student with the same concerns of graduation and college as most high school kids. But when it comes to helping others or getting behind a cause, one can see a passion rare in those of such a young age.
Her passion to help the people of Darfur started in a classroom at Northwestern University in Chicago a couple of years ago. She was taking a summer class where the Rwandan genocide was the topic of discussion. This led to a discussion about what is taking place in Darfur and personal research on the part of Julia.
She came back to Liberty High School and set the stage for a student group that would raise funds to help the people in that region.
“The whole point of the club is to raise awareness and funds for the refugees. We have sent a lot of petitions asking the African union not to support Sudan and we have tried to educate people about what is going on. Not many people know about this. It’s really sad,” she said.
According to Julia, the group started with just 15 of her friends who took an interest and wanted to help. It has grown since that time to include about 55 student members.
The group is selling T-shirts to raise money. Julia said drinking water is a major concern for refugees in Darfur, so those funds are earmarked for a specific cause.
“What we are trying to do is buy a well for a refugee camp in Darfur. The well should last for about five years and that should be good because hopefully this will be over by then,” she said. “A well costs $2,000 and we have raised about $800 so far.”
If Julia is selected as a Huggable Hero through the Build-A-Bear company, her dream of buying that well might expand. Each winner will receive a $7,500 scholarship and $2,500 will be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice. She said the goal would then be to buy two wells in different areas.
The group is also planning to have a set of brothers who survived conflict in Darfur as children speak to students at the high school on May 13.
Julia said her activism will not stop at the high school level.
“I have always been up on foreign policies and affairs. I have been raised in a family where news is important, and I will probably go into some type of human rights law,” she said.
jgoodwin@vindy.com