PROJECT RENEW™

Project RENEW is VVMF’s humanitarian and mine-action program in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam.

Project RENEW removes land mines and other explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Quang Tri and Quang Binh Provinces; educates local citizens about the dangers of ERW; provides health care—including prosthestic limbs—for ERW victims; and furnishes opportunities for income generation for victims and their families through job training and micro-credit programs.

Over the years, Project RENEW has also underwritten the building of schools, libraries, community centers and the first-ever baseball field in Vietnam. The work of Project RENEW is conducted by an all-Vietnamese staff to benefit the Vietnamese people directly.

The impetus for this initiative began in April 2000, when VVMF Founder and President Jan Scruggs and nearly two dozen corporate executives who served with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War—members of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Corporate Council—returned to Vietnam to mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the war.

The American veterans saw that the country of Vietnam had changed quite a bit since their initial visits. But still, hundreds of thousands of explosive remnants of war (ERW) and unexploded ordnance (UXO) remained from the decades-old war, and these deadly remnants still claimed casualties every year.

What the delegation witnessed in that first trip back prompted VVMF to launch Project RENEW in 2001 collaboratively with the Quang Tri Province People’s Committee. Project RENEW is dedicated to Preserving the Environment and Neutralizing the Effects of War.

Since that first delegation in 2000, VVMF has sponsored many trips that take veterans, family members, friends and other interested citizens back to Vietnam to tour the country and observe the operations of Project RENEW first hand.

After 10 years of success in Vietnam removing ERW and helping its victims, VVMF has decided it is time to concentrate on programs closer to home and leave its Vietnam initiatives in the hands of other nongovernmental organizations whose sole purpose is providing aid to the Vietnamese. In 2010, VVMF began working with PeaceTrees Vietnam on this transition, and expects to be done with its work in Vietnam in mid-2011. 

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