Simon Chop is an Australian citizen from South Sudan, born in the rural village of Chotyiel/Purjiek, Bentiu, Western Upper Nile. Simon and his two other siblings were the first generation to attend school and obtain college degrees.His father was a leading-hand to a paramount Chief, Gatkek Lop Top, during the British colonial time in the Sudan, but that did not help his children down the road. As schools and Christian missionaries were off limits, he did not attend school until his teens and early twenties.Although the awareness of the importance of education received zero attention at the remote villages, he managed to break the chain of illiteracy. In the 1980s, as a young adult, he migrated to Khartoum where he had the opportunity to attend school, not on a government scholarship or in formal schooling, but at the informal adult education where he had to work during the day to pay for living expenses and attend classes in the evening.He developed an early interest in debating politics and religious ideas and became involved in community leadership.In 1994, he migrated to the neighboring countries of Ethiopia and Kenya after his villages were blistered by war, disease and natural disasters. He lived in Kenya as a refugee under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for eight and half years, and finally migrated to Australia in 2005.He obtained a Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia in Social Justice and International Relations (2017), and a Diploma in Community Development from the Kenya Institute of Social Work and Community Development in childcare and protection, Kenya, Nairobi.
