30-year-old NBA Houston Rockets star Tracy McGrady, who makes an estimated $21.1 million a year, is an unlikely advocate for refugees in Darfur. He could just live a cushy life in his 35,000 square foot mansion with his four children and wife. Instead, he heard about the plight of Chad and Sudan refugees in Darfur, wanted to see for himself, thought that surely there was something he could do, and traveled there with John Prendergast and Omer Ismail from the Enough project, which bills itself as “the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity.”

As the coordinator for Darfur Dream  Team Sister Schools program, I recently traveled to eastern Chad with Enough senior advisor Omer Ismail  to conducted a rapid assessment in Djabal and Goz Amer, twin refugee camps located near the town of Goz Beida in eastern Chad. We spoke to Darfuri refugee populations, including sheiks, elders, parents, and youth, about the life and conditions in the camps.  We also had in-depth discussions about the humanitarian emergency needs in the refugee camps with U.N. officials and various non-governmental organizations such as INTERSOS, Jesuit Refugee Service, or JRS, Oxfam Intermon, and HAIS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

At the end of May, the STAND chapter of Harwich High School in Massachusetts hosted a talent show that no one in attendance will soon forget, and which carried a far broader impact than just providing an evening of entertainment. Harwich students combined activism with talent to present twenty diverse performances, interspersed with information about the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. The students impressed the audience with entertaining acts, including poetry recitations, acoustic performances and ballet routines as well as the audience favorite gymnastics routine.

The Harwich High School STAND chapter used the talent show to raise awareness about the on-going crisis in Darfur and to raise funds for their Darfuri refugee peers who are part of the Darfur Dream Team’s Sister Schools Program. Throughout the evening, Harwich students presented videos about the conflict in Darfur and showed a clip of 3 Points, a film which chronicles Houston Rockets basketball star Tracy McGrady’s 2007 journey to Darfuri refugee camps in Chad.

The Harwich STAND chapter succeeded in raising an impressive amount of money for their sister school by using their talent and involving their community. Visit the Darfur Dream Team website for more information on how you can join the Sister Schools Program and host an event like Harwich's talent show.

Photo: A member of Harwich's STAND group delivers welcoming remarks in Arabic.

We recently traveled to Djabal refugee camp in eastern Chad for the Darfur Dream Team’s Sister Schools Program. Djabal is one of two Darfuri refugee camps in southeastern Chad and is only accessible by plane or by unpaved roads. The six-hour commute from Abeche -- the central NGO-hub in the country -- makes Djabal a rare destination for most. We traveled to Djabal in order to develop video profiles of Darfuri students living in the camps. The students we met in Djabal were in primary school levels 3-6, the equivalent of 3rd through 6th grades in the United States.

Several internally displaced person (IDP) camps surround Djabal. The IDP camps are home to local Chadian groups who have been displaced from their villages due to inter-ethnic violence. From an aerial view, Djabal camp is organized in communal zones, but is quite spread out compared to other refugee camps. Although there is additional room available in Djabal, the refugees are prohibited by the local militias from cultivating the land or setting up other means to earn a livelihood.

With no opportunity for agricultural production, the Darfuri refugees living in eastern Chad are forced to explore other, sometimes dangerous, means of survival. Darfuri women, in particular, engage in the early morning ritual of collecting straw and firewood, despite being under threat of attack from local militias. Women who gather excess firewood often walk to the nearby town of Goz Beida in the hope of selling the wood and earning enough to purchase vegetables or meat.

Over 60 percent of the 20,000 refugees in Djabal camp are children. The camp currently has six primary schools, Obama, Ocampo, Sudan Djedid, Sultan Tadjadine, Ali Dinar A, and Ali Dinar B, which serve a total of 3,530 students. A shortage of teachers and safe buildings, as well as a lack of supplies make it difficult to give these children the education they desire. Through the Sister Schools Program, the Darfuri refugee children will finally have access to quality education. Below is a photo slideshow of Ali, one of the children we met in Djabal.