Summer lemonade leads YSU student to Darfur activism

YOUNGSTOWN — Lindsey Cerutti was sitting under a tree at Youngstown State University sipping some lemonade at the annual arts festival when she noticed a nearby booth with a sign that said, “Save Darfur.”

Getting some fresh lemonade was the only reason she and a friend came to the festival, but she said she left with an entirely different focus.

She decided to check out the Darfur booth, and what she found had a profound impact on her, so much so that it prompted her to form a YSU chapter of Students Take Action Now: Darfur, or STAND.

Cerutti, 25, now a sophomore social work major from Cleveland, said she bought a wristband at the booth and picked up some information sheets but didn’t read them until she got back to her apartment.

She had heard about the genocide going on in the Darfur region of Sudan in Africa but didn’t realize the extent of the killing until she began reading the information.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, including children who were raped and thrown into fires, she said.

It’s been going on for four years, she said, adding, “That’s the part that angers and frustrates me the most.”

“These people have no kind of voice,” Cerutti said, adding that their own government hasn’t helped them.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.