As a Sudanese war refugee, Abraham Deng Ater escaped from his home country and then traveled halfway around the world for his education.

Ater is one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," a group of young men who were relocated to Tucson.

Since his arrival, he has pursued his education and now has founded a nonprofit organization in hopes of building a school one day in his home country.

Ater developed the idea of a foundation in 2007, when he traveled back home to Sudan, where he reunited with his mother and sisters after not seeing or talking with them since he'd left.

"It was amazing," he said. "I was speechless."

He and a friend from college, Donald Dains, decided the best thing they could do for Sudan was to build a school.

"They won't have to trouble to find an education anywhere," Ater said, referring to the children he hopes will attend the school. "They wouldn't have to be sent away again like us and suffer like we did for that long time."

When Ater and Dains returned to the United States, they started the Lost Boys Schools for Sudan project and have since been trying to raise enough money to build their first school.

Dains, co-founder of the foundation, said they are in the process of finding volunteers, creating building plans and raising funds.

"They have the absolute least access to education in the world," said Dains of children in Sudan. "I couldn't find a more deserving place in the world to actually work and build these schools."

They had planned to begin construction on the school this year, but they say the economy has made it difficult to raise enough money.

"We understand that it's not a sprint, but it's a long-distance type of race," Dains said. "We're looking for people that want to leave some type of legacy behind bigger than themselves - something that's going to make a difference in the world."

Dains said he would do anything for Ater, and he hopes his story can be told.

"The sad thing is, he's seen some of the worst horrors that any human being has ever had to face and endure in any lifetime, and he's seen all this as a child," Dains said. "Despite that, he keeps moving forward and persevering."

In Tucson, Ater received an associate's degree from Pima Community College and a bachelor's in physiology from the University of Arizona. He recently was awarded a master's degree from the UA's College of Public Health.

Alison Hughes, Ater's faculty adviser, said he made a strong first impression after he couldn't get into the school the first time around.

"He introduced himself, and he said, 'Well, I didn't get accepted, and I want to know why,' " she said. "So there's a first impression for you - somebody who just doesn't accept 'no,' and that impressed me a lot."

Hughes continued to help Ater while he was in the school. She said he did extremely well in his courses while simultaneously working a part-time job at Costco and starting the foundation.

Ater's journey to Tucson began when he was forced to leave his village at age 9, due to a civil war between northern and southern Sudan.

"The war was coming into our villages, and the villages were being bombed down, and some of our friends saw their parents killed," Ater said. "All the local villages around southern Sudan met and said, 'We want to send our children away,' because young boys were being taken into the military by force or being taken as slaves."

Ater said he was one of 27,000 young boys who eventually wandered through Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan seeking safety. He said the children were targets of the war.

Ater was able to finish high school in a refugee camp in Kenya, where he learned how to write and speak English. In 2000, the U.S. government decided to bring the young refugees to America, and Ater was moved to Tucson.

"When we first came here, it was so difficult to adjust to life," he said. "With food, crossing the street, turning on the light, using the telephone - things we didn't know before. I had never seen a telephone. We didn't know any of those technologies, so we got used to it."

Ater said only 10,000 of the original 27,000 so-called "Lost Boys" made it to the U.S. Many were lost along the way due to illness or other hardships.

When he arrived in Arizona, Ater was placed in an apartment with four other young men. He said they had no idea what to do for food, so they just waited in their apartment hungry until someone showed them where to go shopping.

"A refugee camp is in a rural area, so we were only used to one food, like grain or wheat flour," he said. "We didn't know about all these fruits and vegetables - that was something new to us. We didn't eat all the food, like salad and ice cream and all that."

As a recent graduate, Ater said he hopes to find a job and establish himself while continuing his work with the foundation, and he's happy that life has led him to the U.S.

"It was a good thing," he said. "That's why I came over here - because I wanted to go to school, and I finally found it here. I'm getting what I need, and I'm on the right track."

Rikki Mitchell is a University of Arizona journalism student who is an apprentice at the Star. Contact her at starapprentice@azstarnet.com