By KRISTI ALBERTSON

The Daily Inter Lake

Tonight, thousands of children across the United States will close their eyes in sleep, tucked in by loving parents after a bedtime story or bath.

Half a world away, thousands of Sudanese children will close their eyes in sleep, alone and afraid, with no parents to comfort them.

In less than four years, violence in the Darfur region has displaced nearly 2 million people. Half of them - more people than live in Montana - are children. Thousands of those children are orphans.

Those are the children Lifeline of Hope intends to reach.

Since its founding eight years ago, the Kalispell-based international aid organization has established 130 orphanages in seven countries. It cares for 17,000 orphans each month in Russia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Mexico, Uganda and Kenya.

Caring for orphans in Sudan will require a unique approach logistically and culturally, director of programs Greg Timmons said.

Building an orphanage for a people who are primarily nomadic cow herders would be impractical, he explained. And in Sudan, "orphanage" is a taboo word.

"To them, it means 'prison,'" he said.

Instead, Lifeline of Hope hopes to create "children's homes" that would travel with tribes. According to the pilot model, widows would care for orphans in small, familylike groups - about three widows for every 15 children. Village chieftains would adopt the children as their nieces and nephews.

The latter is an important step, Timmons said. Accepting children from other tribes goes against the country's culture.

Different groups have been thrown together in refugee camps, such as the one at the base of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. About 2,000 people, half of whom are children, are staying in the camp.

To some extent, these people are lucky, Timmons said. They're alive, and the camp is near a compound run by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

But they share about 100 dishes between them, and a few months ago, they were heading into the winter months without blankets. Sudan is one of the hottest

countries on Earth, but on higher elevations such as the Nuba Mountains, temperatures can drop to the lower 30s at night.

When Lifeline of Hope found out about the refugees' need for blankets, the organization stepped in to help. In three days, it raised $25,000. Within three weeks, it purchased more than 1,100 blankets in Kenya and distributed them among the Sudanese refugees.

Child-care facilitator Ken Grimm handled the logistics in Africa and distributed the blankets in the camp. Every child, beginning with the youngest, received a blanket, as did mothers with infants.

"We have to try to keep these kids alive so we can get them into a children's home," Timmons said.

Grimm has been negotiating with the Southern Sudanese government for nearly two years about caring for the country's orphans.

He was in Sudan in 2005 during the inauguration of Vice President John Garang, who seemed very open to the children's home model. Unfortunately, shortly after Grimm met with him, Garang died in a plane crash, and Grimm had to start negotiations with a new official.

Government support and involvement is a key component of Lifeline of Hope's mission. Few countries have an infrastructure that can adequately meet its children's needs, Timmons said.

"Nobody's watching out for them at all," he said.

Establishing a department to care for the orphans has been part of Lifeline of Hope's negotiations with the Sudanese government. The nonprofit will provide the catalyst, he said, but ultimately the country must responsible for its children.

Experience, however, has taught Timmons it may be several years before the country is ready to adequately care for its orphans.

"In a lot of these countries, they accept that organizations like Lifeline of Hope will be the only thing caring for the kids for the next 10 to 20 years," he said.

Because of its work throughout the world, Lifeline of Hope has been invited to participate in next month's World Initiative for Orphans conference in The Hague, Netherlands. Representatives from 100 countries, government officials and scientists will meet to discuss reforms in world child welfare policies.

The Kalispell organization has been invited because "it's a good example of what people need to be doing to address the orphan situation," Timmons said. "They're speaking about it in theory, and we're already doing it."

Occasionally, people ask Timmons why Lifeline of Hope is so concerned about the world's orphans. They want a list of reasons why involvement is necessary.

Usually, compassion alone is reason enough, but social responsibility is something else people should consider, he said.

There are about 150 million orphans worldwide. By 2015, that number will nearly triple to 400 million, he said - unless people intervene now.

"We've got to expand aid going to orphans drastically, or face more problems than we can possibly face," he said.

Statistically, about half of the world's orphans die, he said. Even if the statistic is accurate, that's still 200 million orphans in eight years. And if Lifeline of Hope and similar organizations don't step in, those children will find comfort and security elsewhere.

Eighty percent of the Taliban are orphans created by Afghanistan's war with the Soviets, Timmons said. No one cared for those children except radical Muslim terrorists and warlords.

If Sudan's orphans aren't cared for, he said, the country could easily become a terrorist breeding ground.

"If they grow up stealing and murdering to survive, basically that country doesn't stand a chance," he said. "They simply become what they've learned."

It currently costs about $100 million a day to care for all of the world's orphans, a price tag the United States alone could easily afford, he said. But if the orphan population increases unchecked, that price will become astronomical.

"We'll be hard-pressed to come up with that money to deal with that," he said. "It's about breaking the cycle."

There are plenty of reasons to be involved in international aid, he added. There are few reasons not to.

"We take care of little kids because they're little kids," he said. "They deserve a chance at life."

On the 'Net: www.lifelineofhope.org

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.