(source: www.vnexpress.net)

(source: www.vnexpress.net)

Floods, unfortunately, are very common in Vietnam. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese are affected by blood and up to a thousand lives are lost causing huge grieves and financial losses. This is unnecessary because floods are preventable natural disasters. The experts are doing their part as many urban planning agencies in Vietnam are collaborating with many international consultant firms. But let us all understand the basics of the flood problem in Vietnam by looking at the graphs:

1) The amount of people affected and deaths caused by flood in Vietnam in the past 20 years. The level describes the amount of people affected and the size of the circles represents the death tolls.

(source: Gapminder.org)

And here is the list of the worst natural disasters in Vietnam:

(source: www.emdat.be)

To understand why flash floods create such a major problem in Vietnam, let’s look at the drainage system of Hanoi:

(source: www.alumni.tu-berlin.de)

As can be observed, Hanoi main water draining pipe is shared among many different systems. And with the rapidly increasing urban population, the usages of the residential and commercial properties also multiply at a fast pace and leave less draining capacity left for the rains and storms.

There are much to be done to upgrade the current infrastructures in Vietnam, but the hope is that more studies can be done for better city planning for the future metro centers in Vietnam. Maybe you can be one of those urban planners and architects!

You may be able to recall a very formal ceremony during the wedding of an aunt, uncle, older cousin or relative. The bride’s family prepares for the arrival of the groom and his family who will parade down the sidewalk bearing gifts under red silk cloths. If you and your family are Buddhist, after the introduction of each others’ parents, the six stand together in front of an altar in the home to seek the permission and the blessings of the ancestors to marry. There is no monk to formally bless the marriage; in fact, this is only done in the home and the couple would soon go to City Hall to sign the marriage certificate.

Interracial relationships are on the rise. As a young Vietnamese, Buddhist woman, how will you and your American, Christian husband-to-be plan your wedding? There are not enough hours in the day to fulfill every tradition in each others’ books. Which traditional practices are important enough to each of you to keep and which traditions must be let go in order to spare the wedding guests the agony of a twenty-two hour wedding?

The tradition of “ruoc dau” when the groom and his family march to the home of his bride’s parents bearing gifts is an old one stemming from a time long ago when you didn’t know who you would marrying. Hundreds of years ago, the groom would come to the bride’s home bearing gifts to show the bride’s father how financially well-endowed he was and that he was capable of taking care of the bride for the remainder of her life. After the father examines the many gifts and gives permission, the bride is finally able to come out and face, for the first time, her husband-to-be. At this time, the two would light incense sticks with their parents and pay their respects to their ancestors. This formal deed is an act for the bride to introduce her groom to her ancestors as a new member of the family. After this is done, both families go to the home of the groom’s parents and present themselves just the same—if it is his belief to do so, as well.

The time of anonymous, arranged marriages have passed but this tradition lives on in respect to the Vietnamese Culture. As a young Vietnamese bride, you have introduced your American significant other to many parts of your culture—the food, the thick sweet coffee otherwise known as café sua da, and the many desserts such as che, but the time has now come to introduce him to more serious and more important traditions. Which parts of this long-honored tradition will you acknowledge, and which must be sacrificed?

Your husband-to-be will comply out of love and respect for you, but it would be out of the question to expect his Caucasian, Christian family to march to your home bearing gifts of fruit, tea and even a full roasted pig. He and his parents lighting incense sticks for ancestors may be a bit intimidating but hopefully they are willing to do it out of love and respect for you and your family. I, personally, could never ask my future in-laws to get on their knees and bow down to my family’s altar, but I would be honored if they at least lit a few incense sticks and held it while my parents and I bowed our heads to the ground before planting our sticks in the small ceramic cup.

This ceremony, including the luncheon, will take up a few hours of your wedding day, but it’s not over yet. Now is the time for the entire family to drive to the groom’s Christian church to be married before a minister. At the church, the bride will change out of her formal ao dai and into a traditional white dress and veil with the help of her mother and bridesmaids.

The bride’s father will escort her down the aisle to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” and he will reply, “Her mother and I do,” when the minister asks him, “Who gives this woman to this man,” and the Christian union will proceed beginning with readings that compare a Christian marriage to a covenant relationship and analyzing God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. The bride and groom stand there as the minister explains the significance of a Christian wedding ceremony.

The minister then invites the parents of both the bride and the groom to approach the altar and light a candle representing their own half. The bride and groom each take the candle their own mothers have lit and together lighting a single candle representing the union of two parts. The bride and groom then take their place in front of the minister where he asks for the rings and blesses them after explaining the symbolism of the ring. It is strong, like their love is, and it has no end, like their marriage. The minister asks if they take each other in sickness and health and until death would they part. Each answer “I do,” as they slip the rings on their partner’s hand and the minister pronounces them husband and wife as their friends and family applaud.

Is this a fair compromise? There are many different ways to incorporate the traditions that are most important to you and your future spouse and deciding which ones are the most important to carry out. It is impossible to include every tradition of both very different cultures out of respect for each of you, so now is the time to make the decision. Which traditions will you keep and which do you think will have to be sacrificed?

http://student-organizations.bentley.edu/vsa/events.html

The hot, lazy days of summer are in full swing and social calendars are heating up – BBQs, hotpots, picnics …   How do you add some refreshing and healthy Vietnamese flavors to your parties?  Spring roll it it UP!

Also known as “goi cuon”, spring rolls have always been somewhat understated, often overshadow by her famous sister, the embodiment-of- Vietnamese-cuisine or Pho.  While appearing on many restaurant menus and touted as a healthy dish, spring roll never got the rapid fan following that it deserves.

The origin of this dish has been subject of debates.  Some believe spring roll came from China – in the form of egg roll.  However some believe that – since spring roll is served fresh, made with different ingredients than egg roll, and has a unique dipping sauce – the dish is very much Vietnamese.   Despite being split on the origin, most agree on one thing: spring roll is delicious.

It is also one of the simpler Vietnamese dishes to make.  And here’s the “practical” portion of this article: I’ve scoured the deep recesses of the Internet to bring you one of the most popular recipes for spring roll (courtesy of Allrecipes.com).

If you’ve never tried to make Vietnamese food before, this will be an easy recipe to test the water and impress friends and family.  If you’re an expert at spring roll making – please take a look at the recipe and let us know if you have your own version or creative spins.

Enjoy and an ngon!

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls (Allrecipes.com – link here for the original posting)

Ingredients

• 2 ounces rice vermicelli
• 8 rice wrappers (8.5 inch diameter)
• 8 large cooked shrimp – peeled, deveined and cut in half
• 1 1/3 tablespoons chopped fresh Thai basil
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 leaves lettuce, chopped
• 4 teaspoons fish sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic chili sauce
• 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped peanuts

Directions

1. Bring a medium saucepan of water to boil. Boil rice vermicelli 3 to 5 minutes, or until al dente, and drain.
2. Fill a large bowl with warm water. Dip one wrapper into the hot water for 1 second to soften. Lay wrapper flat. In a row across the center, place 2 shrimp halves, a handful of vermicelli, basil, mint, cilantro and lettuce, leaving about 2 inches uncovered on each side. Fold uncovered sides inward, then tightly roll the wrapper, beginning at the end with the lettuce. Repeat with remaining ingredients.
3. In a small bowl, mix the fish sauce, water, lime juice, garlic, sugar and chili sauce.
4. In another small bowl, mix the hoisin sauce and peanuts.
5. Serve rolled spring rolls with the fish sauce and hoisin sauce mixtures.

The past few years have seen a high increase in dance televisions shows and competitions. America’s Best Dance Crew, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers are just a few dance shows that showcase the talents of all types of dancers from all types of backgrounds with all types of skin colors.

Unlike other fields of entertainment such as acting and singing, the art of dancing has enabled Vietnamese-Americans to truly showcase their talents on big networks during primetime. While acting and singing observe race under a microscope and create a difficult situation for actors and singers of color to enter the industry, the dance world is seemingly colorblind.

Take America’s Best Dance Crew for instance. Jabbabockeez, We Are Heros, and Super Cr3w included Asian team members; Poreotix and Quest Crew were all-Asian; 21 out of 29 dancers were Asian; and 4 of those 29 dancers were Vietnamese-American. And these are just the headcounts for winning teams. Many other teams, such as Kaba Modern, included more Asian and Vietnamese members.

I love the fact that the dance community in person or on television is so welcoming to any and every persons. But what I love more is that this universal language of dance is spreading.

At the end of this year, Vietnam is coming out with its first hip-hop movie based in Ho Chi Minh City called “Saigon Electric.” It’s amazing to see the spread of the hip-hop culture back home because it means our international youth has another point of connection. The distance and language barrier between Vietnamese and Vietnamese Hyphen youth mean greater separation and disassociation. The universality of body movement will allow us to break this detachment and hopefully truly create One Vietnam.

Check out the “Saigon Electric” trailer.

Vietnam recently experienced the hottest film release of the year!! The new comedy romantic film De Mai Tinh, translated ‘Fool for love’ featured Dustin Nguyen, Truc ‘Charlie’ Nguyen, and Kathy Uyen and was directed by Vietnam’s biggest actor/director Truc ‘Charlie’ Nguyen. The film premiered at the White Palace featuring 1,000 special guests and acclaimed guest-list including movie-stars, singers, actors, and producers of the industry.

April 23 2010 was the much anticipated opening night that amazingly attracted  45,000 fans across cinemas in HCM city, bringing more than VND 2 billion (approximately US$100,000) into the box office within 3 days of it’s release date.

De Mai Tinh brought together the best of the best from producers, film-makers, actors/actresses, and singers such as Australian-Vietnamese Idol finalist Thanh Bui, and top female icon Ho Ngoc Ha with the hottest song collaboration, “Lang Tham Mot Tinh Yeu/ A Silent Love.”  This film, among the first of its kind to be revamped by a successful film crew from a mix of both local and international producers, introduces to audiences flavors of Vietnam’s modernism, pop culture, and  the luxurious lifestyle of the rich and famous.  There were many scenes in the trailer where I could not believe were filmed in Vietnam!

The story follows a captivating tale of humor, trial, love, and pursuit between a hotel clerk Dung (Dustin Nguyen) and his love-at-first-sight with a beautiful lounge singer Mai (Kathy Uyen).  His fearless love brings him to leave his job in chase of his affections for her only to find her involved with a wealthy real-estate mogul. Mai becomes torn between her professional career which depends on her relationship with the wealthy real-estate mogul.

Comedy ensues as the penniless clerk, in order to finance his pursuit of love, is forced to shack up with a very rich but very gay businessman looking for a male companion[1]. Now Dung and Mai are faced with the test of faith as he continues his pursuit of Mai while Mai struggles to choose between true love or a stable future with the real estate mogul.   Dung and Mai’s  journey is filled with rolling-on-the-floor humor, unexpected twists, and brings the audience to ultimately  question, ‘Will their love prevail?’

Success of the film was unlike any other due to a special collaboration between local and foreign film-makers.  International experts worked closely with the Vietnamese crew and introduced new technical skills and film technology. American cameraman Dominic Pereira participated in this close collaboration by dedicating his time and sharing his experience.  The cinematography highlights the hip and bold culture emerging in the Vietnamese elites – fancy cars and clothes,  modern mansions, private yachts, and breathaking beach resorts [2].

New opportunities eagerly await the growing Viet Nam-based film industry, and De Mai Tinh gives evidence to the success that both international and local collaboration could bring.  It is also important to note the difficulty and seldom occasion that Asians are mentioned in the mainstream media.  I would argue that this film deserves mainstream recognition and I hope with the recent successes of modern Vietnamese films, we can soon raise our glasses to celebrate the growth of Vietnamese Media.

———— Check out the Film stills!!———–

The hottest song in Vietnam “Lang Tham Mot Tinh Yeu/ A Silent Love” features the dynamic duo Thanh Bui, an Australian-Vietnamese singer/musician and Australian Idol finalist, and the top Vietnamese singer, Ho Ngoc Ha.  Thanh Bui has one of the most unique and sexiest voice in the industry!

Looking for other hip Vietnamese movies? Try Passport to Love (Chuyen Tinh Xa Xu).

Your Answer Needed: What are some good Vietnamese made films you have seen recently?

National Highway 1A was initially known as Duong Thien Ly (or ‘The Thousand-Mile Road’) and was built in disjointed segments over time. While the connecting of disjointed segments was not necessarily contemplated previously, it was a natural progression and the roads were ultimately connected when the country was united under the Nguyen Dynasty. The highway was further improved and expanded upon by French colonists in the early 20^th Century.

Since the French colonialists’ work on the highway, it has been upgraded by the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) as approved in March 2010 and the World Bank since 1993 following the lifting of the foreign aid embargo on Vietnam. The Japanese ODA Loan will be used to repair and replace nine bridges on NH1A in the southern Mekong delta region (from Can Tho to Ca Mau). The World Bank’s assistance in 1993, the first transport sector project in Vietnam that was funded under a program sponsored by the United Nation Development Program, involved rehabilitating two sections of NH1A from Hanoi south to Vinh and from Saigon south to Can Tho. The 1993 World Bank project also supplied new ferries and rehabilitated existing ones, as well as improved ferry operations at the two river-crossings of My Thuan and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. The World Bank has since repaired 1,000 kilometers of the NH1A and an additional 600 kilometers of improvements are currently underway. More recently, the French company VINCI Construction Grands Projects has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Vietnamese company Deo Ca Investment JSC to work on the construction of the Ca Pass tunnel and road project in Vietnam. The project is estimated at US$600 million and calls for widening 9 kilometer of road and building a new 11 kilometer section that includes two tunnels, three bridges and approach roads, which will eliminate the final dangerous mountain pass crossing on the highway.

The improvements that have thus far been completed on National Highway 1A have benefited the country and its people tremendously. However, NH1A and Vietnamese roads in general continue to need improvements to ensure more efficient transport and safety of everyone on the road. As previously presented in a OneVietnam article, there are all types of vehicles on local roads and highways, from pedestrians to bicycles and cow carts to heavy duty commercial trucks. Particularly in Vietnam, where there is little to no distinction on which vehicles are permitted on which type of road, narrow and low quality roads make smaller vehicles such as bicycles and motorbikes especially vulnerable to accidents.  More specifically for NH1A, the National Assembly’s recent rejection of the proposal to build a bullet train from Hanoi to Saigon means that the highway will continue to be one of the main mediums of transport connecting the different regions of Vietnam. Though safety and efficiency are also functions of regulations and behaviors of those on the roads, having better transport infrastructure would assist in reducing tragedies resulting from roads in poor form.

An Dong 1 in District 5

Today on our tour of the top markets of Vietnam, we finally venture a little further outside of the District 1 bubble of Saigon to An Dong market. Located in District 5 (basically the Chinatown of Saigon), An Dong is a shopper’s paradise.

The first thing you need to learn before venturing out to An Dong, however, is that there are two of them: An Dong 1 and An Dong 2 (or An Dong plaza) that are quite different from each other. An Dong 1 is the older market and basically the wholesale, Costco version of Ben Thanh Market.  The large, multi-story concrete building isn’t the most elegant piece of architecture in Vietnam, but is impressive for its sheer size and super-efficient design. Walk inside and prepare to feel like you’re being swallowed by some massive mythical creature.

Outside and on the ground floor of the market, you can find tons food vendors various food products for sale. You’ll also probably run into a number of chickens and monkeys running around. This is a great place to grab a bite to eat before venturing into the maw of An Dong 1. Like most markets in Vietnam, An Dong is divided into sections. In this case, each floor mostly specializes in certain products, and there are large signs by the escalators telling you whats on each floor. The market as a whole is geared towards clothing and fabric, though and you can find some great deals here. Since it’s further from the touristy center of Saigon, the prices are also lower and the vendors less pushy. So even though you can find yourself squeezing through some tight, jam-packed corridors like at Ben Thanh, you’ll probably feel more at ease. Combined with the surprisingly good ventilation An Dong 1 makes for a great shopping destination.

Once you’ve shopped your feel of An Dong, you can make it over to sleek and modern An Dong 2 for a completely different type of market. The great thing is… they’re almost literally right next door to each other! That’s a story for another week though, so stay tuned folks!

But it is known to all that only a select few obtain a coveted seat in the nation’s best medical school – Harvard Medical.  The journey to Boston is not an easy one, but the reward is immense.  While the stories of glory are often told, the real hard labor and life-changing decisions students make are sometimes less mentioned.  It is our goal today to share a poignant story written by Jack Varon, a Harvard Medical Student and staff writer for the HMS literary magazine Third Space.

The story of ‘Yankel the Gunner’ is a universal story of the trials and tribulations of what it takes to be the best medical student.  Be it Yankel or Minh, Nghia, or Trang, any medical student can use this to help guide his/her life towards success.  Please enjoy.

Harvard Medical School

“Yankel the Gunner” by Jack Varon

No gunner was more famous than Yankel the gunner. In many ways Yankel Kalishnikov was the ideal medical school applicant. He had graduated third in his class at a prestigious northeastern university, and then spent no fewer than seventeen months in a small, impoverished African country, practicing a low-cost method of delivering babies using a clean pair of flip-flops and an iced-tea pitcher. He had published several papers (three of which listed him as first author) describing the effects of microwaves on various cheeses when placed within the mouse gut. One such paper had yielded him a patent on a very successful brand of mousetrap.

childrens hospital boston.org

Yankel loved racquetball, a pursuit to which his Marfan-induced flexibility and length made him well adapted. Set on becoming a surgeon, Yankel had also taken up sewing, as he was sure it would be useful preparation. He had majored in German literature, feeling that it would set him apart from what he predicted would be a very competitive applicant pool. Of course, Yankel had been admitted easily to medical school. His 59 on the MCAT was a new record, a feat he’d achieved by exploiting an obscure loophole that allowed him to take the physics section twice.

Few pursuits were more delightful to Yankel than studying in the middle of the night, especially if a test was very far away. He loved being absolutely assured that no one else in his class was studying, and that the chasm between his knowledge and theirs was widening. Every night, from 3 am to 5 am, he would wake up, study for two hours, and return to sleep. Every morning in the lecture hall, he would triumphantly proclaim, “I cannot believe how little I studied! Surely I am the least responsible student in our class!” This perennial proclamation was always met with groans from those sitting near Yankel, as it was clear from his questions in class (they were often accompanied by a bibliography) that this was a lie.

Yankel was a gunner, and the worst kind. He not only wanted to do well; he wanted to do better than everyone else. He would surreptitiously flip the power switch on the surge protector in the computer lab, but only if he was sure someone hadn’t hit the save button in a few pages. He e-mailed out his summary notes, with tiny errors peppered throughout. Yankel’s notes were very popular, as studying them thoroughly always netted the same grade, a 93. This was always exactly 7 points lower than Yankel’s grade.

Brigham and Women Hospital

Once, and only once, Yankel was spotted on his nightly journey to study. Matilda Schmilda, his classmate, was also awake, no doubt fretting about how her ridiculous name made it impossible for her to be taken seriously. It was obvious that Yankel was planning on studying in the dead of night. In a panic, Yankel began to cry, and begged Matilda not to tell the rest of the students. Confused and frightened, Matilda assured Yankel that his secret was safe and that she did not care how he spent his night.

Yankel could not trust Matilda. As far as he was concerned, everyone was as competitive as him, and Matilda was eager to tear him down. So Yankel devised a plot to get Matilda to drop out of medical school. First, he circulated in his famous notes that a rare genetic disease, called Moranis Syndrome, caused one’s arms and torso to shorten in response to tiny amounts of inhaled formalin. Eventually, the collapsing upper body would crush the respiratory system, and the fictitious disease would prove fatal.

At the start of anatomy block, Yankel would sneak into Matilda Shmilda’s room. Using his superior knowledge of sewing, Yankel would quickly lengthen the sleeves of all of Matilda’s shirts by half an inch every other day. At first Matilda thought her sleeves were getting longer in the laundry, though Matilda would later admit that this didn’t really make sense. When she asked her friends if they thought she had Moranis Syndrome, they not so cleverly responded, “Don’t you mean Moranis Shmoranis Syndrome?”

Matilda continued to be alarmed at her apparently shortening arms. Yankel watched with delight as she rolled up her sleeves a little more each week. His delight quickly turned to frustration, as it seemed apparent that Matilda had no intention of leaving medical school. After two months, Matilda’s bunched sleeves were so voluminous that she could no longer rest her arms against her sides; she was beginning to resemble a child in a snowsuit. Every day, Yankel grew more and more anxious that Matilda would expose his obnoxious study habits.

Conflicted about what to do next, Yankel went to one of his mentors, Isaac. All gunners accumulate mentors so as to have every possible advantage in any possible situation. Isaac was just one of many mentors that Yankel had collected, but Isaac was his favorite. Isaac was an anesthesiologist, but not by choice; he had wanted to be a surgeon, but his fingers were too thick to manipulate the instruments. So Isaac accepted as a consolation that he could at least, as an anesthesiologist, tell surgeons what to do, which was the next best thing.

Yankel never met Isaac in his office, but rather, would scrub in on surgeries so that Isaac didn’t have to waste any time. During one such surgery, Yankel confronted Isaac with his dilemma. “Is she hot?” asked Isaac, only half-joking. “Take me seriously!” Yankel whined. “If she tells anyone that I study in the middle of the night, I don’t know what I’ll do.” While Isaac was busy calming Yankel, neither of them had time to notice that Matilda Schmilda was shadowing the same surgery and had heard their entire conversation.

While one might think she would be angry that Yankel had convinced her she was dying just because he didn’t trust her, years of teasing about her name had made Matilda very meek. Relieved that her sleeves had indeed been getting longer, and not her arms getting shorter, she decided that she would find Yankel at his study spot at night and explain to him that he had nothing to worry about, and that he shouldn’t waste his time lengthening her sleeves.

So that night, at 3:07 am, Matilda found Yankel, hunched over a desk while he pored over a notebook. She was wearing jeans and a green turtleneck with sleeves that trailed on the ground. The moment she opened her mouth to whisper “Yankel,” he jumped up with a start, panicked, and hurled a computer monitor in her direction. Computer monitors are much more resilient than movies and television would have one believe, and it fell, unscathed to the ground. Matilda, though, was not so lucky. The monitor had crushed her chest and killed her instantly. Yankel hastily picked up the monitor and placed it back on the desk, and ran from the room.

The next morning, Matilda’s body was found, and it was apparent to everyone that she had finally succumbed to her Moranis syndrome…

Whatever happened to Yankel?  To continue reading the rest of the story, please visit here.
Please don’t forget to comment below.  We’d love to hear what you got from the story.

Saigon Square in District 1 of Saigon

Today we continue our tour of Vietnamese markets with Saigon Square. The mecca of fashion boutiques and designer knock-offs, Saigon Square is a located in District 1 between Ben Thanh market and the Saigon Opera House. It used to be located near the embassy on Le Duan street, and many websites and tourist maps still list its location there, but it’s now open from 9-9 daily on Nam Ky Khoi Nghia.

A well known ”Russina market”, Saigon Square is the one-hop stop for Saigonese looking for a shopping fix. The sprawling complex has almost everything the modern Vietnamese or expat needs to live in relative luxury in Vietnam from jewelry and watches to bags and jeans. Several stores near the main entrance even offer “ipods.”

Like most places in Vietnam, Saigon Square is roughly divided into sections each offering a specific type of good. Outside the main entrance are the shoe vendors and other miscellaneous shops. The recently-added South wing is full of bag shops and a few shirt vendors. The main complex, meanwhile, is divided into two floors with a mixture of vendors, though the top floor focuses more on clothing.

Standard Vietnam bargaining rules apply and you can expect to be overcharged here, though perhaps not as badly as in Ben Thanh market. The vendors seem much more reasonable however–perhaps a function of the slightly less touristy nature of the market–and great bargains can still be had.

Whether you’re in a shopping mood or not, however, Saigon Square is worth a visit just for the experience. Crowded and bustling, Saigon Square has the claustrophobic yet energetic feel of Ben Thanh market and a hundred other Vietnamese markets. But the sleek, bright complex with giant Japanese air conditioning machines blasting from every gives it the feel of budding modern shopping mall. An amalgam of old and new, Saigon Square is in many ways a bridge between traditional and modern Vietnam.

So next time you’re in Saigon, take a cab to Saigon Square, grab some sugarcane drinks at the food shop next door, and get a taste of a market unlike any other in Vietnam!

Photobucket - Dang Thiep

The legacy of Agent Orange is still very much alive today.   While the war ended many decades ago, its chilling aftermath still lingers today and affects over 150,000 children in Vietnam.  To refresh your knowledge about this harmful chemical, please read the article Understanding Agent Orange.

While VTP has published numerous articles describing Agent Orange,  a common question (and debate) has surfaced time and again regarding how to address the Agent Orange legacy.  Today’s article will review current approaches to this problem while offering a historical perspective on the progress made thus far.

The following information reflects the efforts of the Ford Foundation and its many partners.

The First Phase – Test and Contain

The Ford Foundation and its grantees developed “a multifaceted approach to test and contain dioxin-contaminated soils, restore landscapes, develop treatments and support centers for affected Vietnamese, and educate the US public and policymakers.  Towards these efforts, the Ford Foundation has since 2000 brought in new supporters and foundations and has committed $12 million.

Most importantly, the initial phase called for collaborative efforts between the US and Vietnam to identify, contain, and clean-up dioxin “hot spots”.  The story begins in 2000.

A grant of $150,000 made to the Vietnam Red Cross Agent Orange Victims Fund provided a valuable opportunity to obtain an “on-the-ground” perspective of the “profound impact of Agent Orange and how much remained to be done”.

Around this time, a study released by the Vietnam Ministry of Health-Hatfield environmental consulting firm showed that “high levels of dioxin remains at former US military bases”.  This suggested that dioxin was “principally a point-source pollutant” and that an effective containment strategy would focus on these “hot spots”.

To test this “hot spot hypothesis”, the Ford Foundation granted $289,000 to the Vietnam Ministry of Health and Hatfield to survey former US military bases.  The study, conducted between 2002-2005, showed that 28 military sites contained significant amount of dioxin. The results of these studies provided an opportunity to engage the US government.

The Next Step – Diplomatic Breakthroughs

In 2003, Ford funded a conference held in Washington D.C.  on “The Future of the US-Vietnam Relationship”.  The conference involved dialogues among “senior officials of both governments” and “academics, NGOs, and the business community” on topics of trade agreements, etc.  The conference also addressed the “most difficult subject of all” – the legacies of war and Agent Orange.  The outcome of this conference helped propel the Agent Orange issue into “international politics and diplomatic arena”.

In November of 2006, a diplomatic breakthrough occurred when President George W. Bush and President Nguyen Minh Triet issued a joint statement on Agent Orange stating that both nations acknowledged the dioxin problem and agreed to address this issue in order to continue “development of [US-VN] bilateral relationship”.

In February of 2007, former US Ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Marine, secured $400,000 in government funding for “remediation at Da Nang”, an area heavily affected by Agent Orange.  The Ford Foundation contributed an additional $1.3 million to this project.

Current Strategy – Engage the Public

While Ford and its partners have been successful in many projects in the past, the future of “effective and sustainable programs over time would require more than the support of two governments and courageous grantees”.  The current strategy has been to initiate a “citizen-to-citizen dialogue to raise awareness of people in the US” including officials and business leaders.

In 2007, the US-VN Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin met “to advance a humanitarian approach”.  The group made a significant impact by briefing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and State Department officials in addition to testifying at Congressional hearings.  The result of such lobbying efforts led Congress to appropriate $3 million for Agent Orange/dioxin work in Vietnam for the fiscal years 2007, 2009, 2010.

Ford and 4 other foundations will continue to support the Dialogue Group and its mission to “address the health and environmental consequences of Agent Orange”.  The Dialogue Group has contributed to “strengthening health services for people with disabilities, helped upgrade medical facilities, trained healthcare workers, and provided surgeries, therapy, education and job opportunities”.

Other efforts include an innovative case-management system in Da Nang which promotes “equal opportunities for young adults with disabilities, support self-help groups, challenged the stigma and discrimination, and continue public education in the US and Vietnam.”

Social Media, Web 2.0 and the World

Any movement towards a noble cause requires a strong focus on public outreach and education.  The legacy of Agent Orange and the future of remediation efforts by foundations and non-profit groups must focus on ways (and venues) to reach out to the public.

The phenomenon of the web 2.0 and the popularity of social media has become the prime vehicle for news delivery and social awareness.  OneVietnam Network is committed to educating and engaging the public about the impact of Agent Orange and current efforts to help victims of this toxic chemical.

For more stories about Agent Orange, please read our other features on VTP.