The Lost Boys of Sudan:

A Journey Towards a
Better Life

Sagar Rastogi and Connor Rempe

Junior Division
Group Website
Process Paper Words: 489 Words

Process Paper
How we chose our Topic:
To determine our project for this years theme, Encounter, Exploration,
and Exchange, we wanted to choose a topic that not only interested us, but also
gave us access to personal interviews. This topic would give us more primary
sources and information which we could incorporate into our website. And, thats
how we came across, The Lost Boys of Sudan. This topic fit our criteria, and was
also a great example for each individual element for this years National History
Day theme.

How we Conducted our Research:

We decided to do 2-3 months of research, getting a more rounded
understanding of our topic, before beginning the website. In the beginning, articles
and websites helped us gain more background information on our topic. Next, we
started to schedule interviews and also borrowed books from the library that could
help us in our research. Fortunately, scheduling interviews was easy, as there were
many Lost Boys who lived near our location, in Arlington. We conducted personal
interviews with three Lost Boys, Moses Ajou, Peter Chambang, and Jacob Deng, at
the Saturday Bridges Program in Malden, where they meet every Saturday to help

other Sudanese children. The interviews gave us three different perspectives and
three different personal stories. These stories helped us gain information for each
aspect of our website. Moses Ajou is the only Lost Boy who gave us permission to
videotape the interview for our website. His interview clips made our website more
impactful and personal. Due to our resources and research, we were able to work
more on the visual factor of our website, which significantly improved it.

How we Selected and Constructed our Website:

After we finished the main part of our research, we began our website. We
chose to do a website for our project not only because it was fun and we had
experience in the category, but also because it gave us a chance to use a variety of
interactive media, audio, videos, graphs, and images. Building a website also
allowed us to convey our message across better in a visually impactful way. While
constructing our website, we decided to use all that we could to make our website
better. We also made sure to give an even amount of information for each part of
the theme to make the information more balanced.

How our Project relates to this Years Theme:

Our topic relates to each component of this years theme. For example, the
Lost Boys Encountered many things in their youth, like separation from their
families, the Sudanese Civil War, and dangerous wild animal attacks. As they
walked on their 1,000-mile journey, they Explored many refugee camps, like the

Kakuma refugee camp, which taught them many things. The Lost Boys of Sudan
lived a life that we could never imagine but their Exchange with the U.S. gave
them food, a place to live, and access to education and jobs based on age. The Lost
boys exchanged with the U.S. a new way to define refugees as they were thought
to be uneducated, even though they were.