McCook native now working in South Sudan - McCook Daily Gazette

REPUBLIC of SOUTH SUDAN -- Keri Dodge, formerly of McCook, has accepted a position in the South Sudan of northern Africa beginning June 1.

She is with Samaritan's Purse, a nondenominational Christian humanitarian organization striving to provide relief to people in crisis situations worldwide in over 100 countries.

Keri has spent the last six months in Haiti, working with a team to meet the nutritional needs of infants and small children after the 2010 earthquakes ravaged that country and left thousands homeless.

Keri will serve as Emergency Nutrition Coordinator in the South Sudan with a team of Americans trying to improve the desperate situation forced on the Sudanese people by the Sudan government.

Sudan's military has been waging a brutal war against its own people. This campaign of violence has terrorized and displaced thousands of citizens who have been relocated to refugee camps across the border from Sudan in the newly independent South Sudan.

These camps are now home to more than 120,000 people. Most of these people suffer from severe malnutrition.

As Nutrition Coordinator at one of these refugee camps, Keri's primary function will be to supervise, provide leadership and day-to-day management of the refugees' nutritional needs.

She will manage and train a nutrition staff to improve conditions of people who have been starving, existing by eating roots, bark, grub worms and insects.

Keri has worked internationally since she went to South Africa as a Peace Corp volunteer in July of 2007. After leaving the Peace Corp, she remained in South Africa, working as a missionary, until she joined Samaritan's Purse.

Keri is a 1995 graduate of McCook High School and a 1997 graduate of McCook Community College. She received her Master of Science degree in nutrition and family consumer science from Eastern Illinois University in 2001. She is a registered dietician.

Keri's parents are Lee and Beverly Dodge of McCook.