There are 2,751 damaged or destroyed villages in Darfur, where genocide and war has raged for… There are 2,751 damaged or destroyed villages in Darfur, where genocide and war has raged for about five years.

The Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition is urging Pittsburghers, Darfur organizations or anyone with interest to sponsor one village and hold a sign bearing that village’s name in a rally and march that will take place May 18.

Yesterday at the Tree of Life Congregation in Squirrel Hill, PDEC was joined by more than 150 supporters and 10 groups including Pitt’s division of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur and VoKols, an a cappella group from the Pitt Jewish University Center, Hillel, for a kick off event for the rally.

“Anyone who signs up to hold a sign will be entrusted with memorializing that village,” PDEC Coordinator David Rosenberg said. “If they take it seriously they might find out something about it or look it up. We’ll also hopefully have some Darfuri contacts talking to them about some of the areas they know about specifically that have been destroyed or that they know about it.”

Rosenberg is also hoping to encourage people from the South Hills to take southern Darfur villages and the North Side to support northern Darfuri villages to make a connection across the globe.

Four Darfuri natives gave testimonials as a part of the kickoff event.

One of the most detailed and stirring testimonies came from Sahar Dinar, a high school student who lived in Darfur until she was five. Her mother, who is a social worker, sat beside Dinar at the front of the room.

Dinar moved to the United States in 1999 but returned to Darfur in 2003 for a family visit.

She said the first few moments of her visit were pleasant, just sitting and talking with cousins. But then the shooting started.

Dinar and her family had to hide under tables and beds in her uncle’s house. She said she thought she was going to die.

The gunshots came closer to the village and went on until the next morning.

When it was safe to go outside, Dinar and her family found bullet holes everywhere.

Dinar returned to Philadelphia where her uncle was the president of the Darfur Alert Coalition.

“That’s when I really started to get really active in this whole Darfur cause,” she said. “That’s when I started to say to myself, this is my family, these are my friends, these are my people, and we can help them.”

Dinar’s passion turned to the children of Darfur, and she started the Children’s Alert Project in Philadelphia to support women and children in Darfur. She returned last summer with her family to deliver school supplies.

“I started to say to myself, what if that were me?” she said. “What if I were this little girl or little boy, and I woke up one day and found my mother dead or my father dead or my brothers and sisters were dead.

“They have nothing,” she said. “They have nothing but to suffer, and they have hope. The hope that people like us in the United States will try to help them and protect them and tell them that it’s OK.

“Most people don’t understand how their efforts are helping not only the people of Darfur but all over the world.”

Other speakers echoed that participating in events like the one yesterday and the upcoming rally make a difference. They also stressed the importance of American aide.

Muhdy Baradin, who works as a social worker in the United States and is active in the Darfur Alert Coalition’s Education Committee, calls his family in Darfur daily. He said on one visit to Darfur, people gave him a message for Americans.

“They said, ‘go tell the American people our lives are in danger, and we’re all going to die,’ ” he said. ” ‘Tell them to help us.’ “

The second speaker, Niemat Ahmed, shared a similar story.

On his first return visit to Darfur 15 years after he first moved to the States, an old woman approached him and asked if he was returning to the United States. When he answered yes, she told him she had a message from the people of Darfur.

“Please just tell them that we thank them very much,” Baradin related the woman’s message.

The woman told him the Americans saved the Darfuris three times: during the war when the refugees were taken away from war zones, once in refugee camps when there was no food and also in the camps when there was no sanitation.

Bahradin returned to the microphone for final comments.

“After the Holocaust, we said never again,” he said. “In Armenia, we said never again. Bosnia, never again. Rwanda, never again. Now we see it start in Darfur for four years.”

The march will begin above Mellon Arena at Freedom Corner and continue through the streets of Pittsburgh to the Federal Building. All four Darfuri speakers will return to participate.