Fellowship #5: Empower Agent Orange caregivers in Vietnam

Location: Dong Hoi, Vietnam

Read more about our work on Agent Orange!

AP’s work on Agent Orange began in 2014, when we commissioned a needs assessment of 500 affected families in the province of Dong Hoi. Helped by Peace Fellow Seth McIntyre, our Vietnamese partner, the Association for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (AEPD) then selected ten particularly vulnerable families for a pilot project.

Since then we have worked with these families to put a human face on the tragedy of Agent Orange and invest in the caregivers. They have proved to be an excellent investment! We have raised over $12,000 for eight families, thanks to the inspired fundraising of Peace Fellows Ai Hoang and Jacob, pictured above. Jacob’s money enabled Mrs Anh to purchase a cow, which helps to pay for medical treatment.

Working with AEPD outreach workers, who were themselves wounded in the Vietnam War, the 2018 Peace Fellow will visit the eight families supported by AP so far, evaluate the success of each intervention, update profiles on the AP and AEPD websites, raise funds for a new family, and help AEPD’s outreach workers to design income-generating projects for caregivers.

Qualifications

• A commitment to disability rights and knowledge of peer support
• A talent for story telling – writing, photography and videography
• A passion for fundraising, particularly crowd-funding
• Experience of proposal-writing
• Work experience in Vietnam
• Vietnamese language preferred

For More Information

• Horror and Heroism as Vietnamese Confront the Legacy of Agent Orange (2017)
• The blogs of Jacob Cohn (2017)
• The blogs of Ai Hoang (2016)
• The blogs of Armando Gallardo (2015)
• The blogs of Seth McIntyre (2014)

The beneficiaries

Mr. Phan That was exposed to Agent Orange during the war and has passed dioxin poisoning to his son, Pham Van Linh, 31, and his daughter Pham Thi Linh, 37. He was supported by AP in 2018 with a cow and calf. 

The partner

Mr. Luu (right) stepped on a landmine at the age of 7 and lost one arm and three fingers. He is an AEPD outreach worker and an advocate for persons with disabilities. 

View more AEPD photos.

The Peace Fellow

“I came into this fellowship knowing almost nothing about Vietnam or Agent Orange, and getting to learn about both firsthand, and to hear firsthand the stories of those most affected, was a deeply moving experience.” – Jacob Cohn, the 2017 Peace Fellow in Dong Hoi.