My Lai Peace Park Dedication Ceremony
The Madison Friends (Quakers) and the community of My Lai would like to invite all people of peace and goodwill to join them on March 16, 2001, to help usher in a new peaceful millenium by dedicating the My Lai Peace Park.
The two-storied gazebo has been finished and a site has been prepared to plant the trees, shrubs and flowers which will make the My Lai Peace Park a green, growing living monument to peace and a celebration of life. Other projects in My Lai sponsored by the Madison Friends include new schools, a loan fund for the poor women of My Lai, a dental clinic and art exchanges between the children of My Lai and Madison, Wisconsin.
For more information about the dedication ceremony for the My Lai Peace Park or about other projects in My Lai contact Mike Boehm, Chair, My Lai Peace Park Project 2312 E. Johnson St. Madison, WI 53704 608-244-9505
US - Indochina Educational Foundation Established
During a 1999 trip to Cambodia for the Forum conference, Mark Ashwill, director of the World Languages Institute and Fulbright Program Advisor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was struck by how little public or private money is available for promising students who want to attend college or graduate school overseas.
Ashwill’s interest in Indochina has resulted in several language-culture exchange programs involving Vietnamese and American universities, businesses and other groups. Now he has decided to try, in what he calls “ a modest but compelling way,” to help meet an urgent educational need in one of the poorest regions on earth.
Ashwill recently announced the establishment of the US-Indochina Educational Foundation, Inc (USIEF) a 501c3 non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Buffalo, New York with representatives in Phnom Penh and Hanoi. The foundation will provide financial and other support to some of the best and brightest students from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos who want to pursue advanced education and training in the United States.
The foundation will also fund remedial English language training, if necessary, and in exceptional cases, will consider both undergraduate and non-degree applicants. In addition, USIEF will arrange for orientation and mentoring of grantees who, as a condition of support, will be asked to fulfill a service requirement - visits to local schools, for instance, or participate in on-campus events, and other meaningful and mutually beneficial activities.
Initial funding for USIEF was provided by a $10,000 grant from the Paul J. Koessler Foundation. Additional funds will be solicited from individuals, corporations and other private foundations with an interest in and commitment to Southeast Asia. Ashwill said that wherever possible, the foundation will solicit support, including in-kind contributions, from host institutions throughout the US.
The first student to receive assistance from the new foundation is Sokna Heng of Cambodia. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Cambodia’s National Institute of Management, which has been staffed in part by instructors from Georgetown University and the University of San Francisco. A scholarship student in SUNY Buffalo’s English Language Institute, Heng is preparing for admission to a graduate program in international trade.
Ashwill says, “We expect that Sokna and future USIEF alumni will become bilingual and bicultural bridges who will return home upon completion of their studies to put their education and training to good use for the benefit of themselves, their families and their countries.
From SUNY Buffalo press release. For more infrormation on USIEF, see http://www.usief.org