August 4, 2025
In the corners of Mangateen Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp, where dreams often disappear, dried by the hot sun of Juba in South Sudan, and rain floods, a young woman once sold groundnuts, water, and snacks to survive. This is the story of Nyakang Madier’s unwavering determination.
Before becoming a symbol of youth resilience, Nyakang was known as “that hawker girl,” darting through traffic and dodging boda-bodas (bicycle taxis). Displaced by conflict, at the age of 12 she was already caring for her younger siblings. “Daily bread […] was a battle,” she says, half-smiling. “If I didn’t sell, we didn’t eat.”
To make things worse, her elders saw her as their family’s best investment. “A suitor was waiting; charming, healthy, and nearly four times my age,” she says. “They thought marrying me off would buy the rest of my siblings a ticket out of misery.” In truth, it was a heartbreaking economic strategy hidden by cultural expectations. However, Nyakang’s interests lay elsewhere, in going to school like any other child. Education was a luxury she dreamed of but couldn’t afford; instead, she battled a marriage proposal.
The civil war from 2013 to 2016 in South Sudan didn’t just steal her childhood. It stole her stability, her schooling, and every hope of stability. Her family, like many others, faced the brutal triad of poverty, unemployment, and persistent displacement. “I became an adult before I even knew how to spell my mother’s name,” she jokes. But where tragedy brewed, change also emerged.
A turning point in Nyakang’s story
The Youth-Talk project, a Search for Common Ground youth-led initiative implemented in four countries, including South Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Kenya, was the turning point in Nyakang’s story. “Search appeared when I needed mental, physical, and financial support to complete my secondary education. The skills I gained [during the Youth-Talk program] will be the tools to help me in my college journey,” she explains. Nyakang’s hopes to continue to higher education are similar to those of thousands of displaced kids at IDP camps, refugee settlements, orphanage centres, and those living on the streets—young lives often paying the price for conflicts they had no part in creating.
After participating in the Youth-Talk programme in South Sudan, Nyakang transitioned to becoming a volunteer, sharing her time between Search for Common Ground’s initiatives and Seed of Hope Primary School. Her mission? To empower other young people, especially those packed in the margins of Mangateen Camp, where IDPs wait not just for NGOS’ humanitarian support, but for recognition. “I have nothing to offer,” she says, “but the skills and opportunities Search gave me? Those, I can pass on.”
It sounds simple, but in a country where trauma is passed down like inheritance, sharing knowledge and empathy is nothing short of ground-breaking. Through conflict management, perception and perspective training, and mental-health education, Nyakang is reshaping how the next generation sees and practices peace.
Nyakang the Peacebuilder
Her time in Seed of Hope Primary School isn’t just about handing out crayons and quoting peace slogans. “Our community carries wounds,” she explains. “And these wounds grow deeper when no one explains them.” For her, the classroom is more than a blackboard and chalk; it’s a workshop for tolerance, where every child is a case study in potential. Nyakang became a mentor, counsellor, and big sister to the pupils. She listens with empathy when no one else will, intervenes when parents are far away from the young ones, and challenges toxic narratives before they take root. “Wrong perspectives begin early,” she warns. “I’m here to ensure they don’t become dangerous.”
Over the years, Nyakang’s activism has gone beyond Mangateen. Through dialogue circles, youth forums, and intergenerational debates—all activities of the Youth-Talk project—she has become a voice for the unheard. She’s not the typical microphone-grabbing advocate, but more of a conversation-starter with empathy. “Even in silence, we carry stories,” she says. “But I prefer to tell mine out loud.” Among her peers at Search, she has found a tribe. “Some of us are orphans. Others have slept more nights on the streets than in beds. And some,” she adds with a playful glance, “are born to cause constructive trouble.”
Youth-talk participants come from hard-to-reach communities with various cultural differences, but each has their own difficult story hiding behind their smiles. Still, together in diversity, they are rewriting the narrative of South Sudanese youth, on the radio, in schools, in community spaces, and in youth forums. “It’s always pain and misery,” Nyakang admits, “but we have the tools to change things. If not today, you will feel the impact in a few years.” She speaks not like a politician making promises, but like someone who has carried the weight of delayed peace and slow reconstruction firsthand.
What makes Nyakang’s story both painful and powerful is not just what she overcame, but what she chose to become. She could have disappeared into the background, folded under pressure, or accepted her fate as a child bride. Instead, she became a mirror for others, reflecting their dignity, potential, and pain with empathy and enthusiasm.
In a nation exhausted by cycles of war and broken promises, Nyakang is not waiting for peace to be delivered from a presidential speech or a foreign mission. She’s planting the seeds right in the camp where her adolescence was interrupted. And for every young girl in South Sudan selling snacks under the heat, dodging disappointment and burdened by cultural stereotypes, Nyakang’s strength is a reminder that once purpose emerges, empowerment follows—and solutions can rise from within the very communities that continue to march toward meaning and hope, bound together in the solidarity of shared struggle.
Now 21, Nyakang has shown a strong commitment to breaking barriers, speaking out, and staying close to the vulnerable—continuing to support the community she respects and sees as full of potential.
