The Lost Boys who get at least a high school education do the best but, in California at least, they often don't get the chance because they need to work to survive, says Lako Tongun, who escaped Sudan in the early 1960s and now teaches at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. Tongun will deliver the keynote address at this evening's event.

The Lost Boys who have succeeded, he says, are those, as in any group, with the most determination and ambition. "Also some of them happened to be put up with families that are very supportive and have encouraged them."

Tongun himself was a Lost Boy before the name was invented. With other young boys he walked from Sudan to Uganda during the first civil war. He eventually earned a Ph.D. in the United States and was planning to return to his country when the second civil war broke out 20 years ago. It is now the longest civil war in modern history, killing nearly 2 million Sudanese and creating 500,000 refugees, including 20,000 Lost Boys. About 4,000 of the Lost Boys have resettled in the United States, 160 of them in Utah. Current violence in western Sudan's Darfur region, which Secretary of State Colin Powell recently described as "genocide," is now creating even more refugees.

This evening's event "is all about thanksgiving to all Americans for what they did for the Lost Boys," says Sudanese Student Association president Gai. He says part of the Sudanese students' success stems from the support of volunteers in the community, who have helped the refugees enroll in college and apply for financial aid.

Gai, a lanky second-year student who is studying sociology and now wears braces on his teeth, says he feels very Americanized now, even though he has lived in the United States for only three years.

Although many of the Lost Boys are now succeeding and some, like economics student James Garang, are now attending the U., some have had to drop out of SLCC for lack of funds. Many, Gai says, send money to their families in refugee camps in Kenya and struggle to make ends meet.

"It's amazing to me, given the life they've had and the childhood they had, how strong they are," says Kristy Swapp, Gai's girlfriend. "I know no way to explain it based on American culture." She credits their religious faith — "They'll say, 'I may have been lost from my family, but not lost from God' " — and their sense of being part of an extended network of cousins and ancestors. "By the time they're 3, they've heard their family history back 10 generations."

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"The Lost Boys Overcoming Trauma" begins at 5 p.m. at the Student Events Center on the Redwood Campus of Salt Lake Community College, 4600 S. Redwood Road. Tickets are $6.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com