The Trust was set up in 2006 by staff
and students at Cranmer Hall & Wesley Study Centre, both part of St John's College Durham. The trust is inspired by two people:
- Bishop Francis Loyo, the Bisphop of Rokon, South Sudan
- Edith Jackson (1915-2004)
Bishop Francis studied at St John's college in 2004/05. During the year he had a profound impact on many of us who were there at the time as we learnt more about him and his people he serves in Rokon. We heard how his people had suffered from many years of civil war and how they had become refugees in their own country, without homes or food. We also found out about the extraordinary lengths that he and his fellow church leaders would go to help their people.
Francis is back in South Sudan now continuing with the work of renewing the people and community of Rokon. He left us in September 2005 with a strong desire to do what we could to support him and his country, but we weren’t sure what to do and how to get started. Which brings us to Edith Jackson.
Edith Jackson was a teacher who had a passion for Africa. Despite family pressures, she traveled to Africa and committed herself to teaching local people rather than European expatriates. She taught in Sudan from 1948-1955, and then later in Nigeria. Edith died in 2004 and left an inheritance to one of our Trustees. Shortly afterwards our Trustee met Bishop Francis. Moved by what he heard - together with a sense that the Sudan connection with his recently deceased aunt was more than just coincidence - our trustee donated some of the inheritance to set up a charity to support education in Sudan.