CLARKSTON, Ga. -- At the end of 2015, a well was drilled in the tiny village of Billing Daldier in South Sudan. It wasn't the sort of change that makes news, it was the quiet kind that alters lives and shifts futures.
One of the people who helped make this happen is a woman known in Clarkston as Mama Gini, a longtime pastoral associate at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, Gini Eagen is one of those people whose lives, inside and outside their job, has always been about helping others.
When the Lost Boys of Sudan settled in Clarkston, Gini was their guide, in more ways than anyone could have known. "They've been through so much and they've come to the other side."
The story of the Lost Boys of Sudan inspired the Warner brothers movie 'The Good Lie.' It tells of people like Majok Marier, one of 20,000 young boys displaced and orphaned during Sudan's civil war, who walked more than 1,000 miles for help, and freedom.
Eagen says, "These boys were so vulnerable and so they came here with open hearts. I can remember the first time I saw some of the boys cry and I thought at least now you feel safe enough to cry."
Gini truly became their mother, feeding them, helping them with day to day issues, letting them live with her so they could attend college.
Majok Marier says they gave her the name Mama Gini. "She become the mother of the world and that's why we give her the name."
Gini helped Majok establish the non profit Wells for Hope.
"In my village they don't have running water. I want to bring water to my village."
11 Alive was able to help surprise Majok in a random act of kindness that helped raise funds for the first well. Gini was there that day, as always. She even went with the lost boys to Sudan, when some of them were reunited with their families. Her friend Estelle Ford Williams remembers, "She had just lost her husband, she was 65 years old, so she gets on a plane and goes with the lost boys back to Sudan to help them find their families. So this is typical of Gini. she would just go to the nth degree."
Now battling cancer, Gini still tends to her beloved lost boys, to the incarcerated and the sick, truly a lifetime labor of love.
"My appreciation for life and the beauty of the human spirit, it was just so reinforced."
We shared with Gini that she was a community service award winner and gave her a plague and a check for $1,100 to be made out to the charity of her choice, as if there was any ever doubt. Gini made the check out to Wells for Hope.