Headquarters
26 West Street
Boston, MA 02111
Phone 617 728 2515
Fax 617 728 2595
Email nnguyen@oxfamamerica.org
Contact Ngan Nguyen
www.oxfamamerica.org
www.oxfammekong.org
Southeast Asia Regional Office
No. 41, Street 352
P.O. Box 883, Boeung Keng Kang 1
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Phone 855-23-210-357
Fax 855-23-210-357
Email seasia@oxfamamerica.org
Contact person Mike Ounsted
Mission
Oxfam America seeks lasting solutions to hunger, poverty, and social injustice. By directing expertise and resources to local organizations in poor communities, Oxfam builds on community strengths and promotes lasting change that will allow families and individuals to break the cycle of poverty. Oxfam America is also widely known and respected for its effective humanitarian responses to natural disasters and political crises. Through national and international policy research and advocacy, Oxfam America pursues systemic solutions to inequities rooted in social, political, and economic systems. Through collaboration with 10 other autonomous members of Oxfam International, we extend our reach and our effectiveness into more than 115 countries around the world.
Oxfam America's Mekong Program
After nearly 20 years of working in Southeast Asia, Oxfam America has refined its regional focus to where the need is greatest and where it can have the greatest impact on the alleviation of poverty: the Mekong Region, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, Burma, and Thailand. The Mekong River Basin is rich in natural resources, but the intensity of the poverty in these countries is greater than elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Deforestation and the degradation of soils due to the stripping of the natural resource base, over-exploitation of fresh water and aquatic resources, mono-agriculture and ill-conceived development, all continue to fuel growing concern for the well-being and future of the 65 million people who live in the Mekong River Basin.
Oxfam America's unique Mekong Program has been developed collaboratively with regional partners, and seven other Oxfams operating in the region, to create a mutually reinforcing network of support between micro-and macro level activities. Oxfam America is leading this integrated approach which will use issues shared by the poor of all six riparian countries of the Mekong River to develop common program and advocacy activities and to realize regional solutions.
- Oxfam's Mekong Program strives to:
- Secure people's right of access to fresh water and to food and income security;
- Ensure that marginalized people have an effective voice in influencing decisions that affect their lives;
- Ensure that men and women enjoy equal rights in the resolution of these issues.
- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the Oxfam America-funded project TYM ("The Affectionate Fund"), a microcredit program for women entrepreneurs in Vietnam. TYM provides small loans to very poor women who use the money to start small businesses. The program, which has been highly successful in making many families more economically secure, was initiated by Oxfam America with more than $1.3 million in support from philanthropist George Miller of San Francisco and New York's Janet McKinley, an Oxfam America board member. During her visit to a TYM project site in Vietnam, then First Lady Hillary Clinton announced Archipelago's donation of $25,000 to Oxfam America in support of TYM.
- Oxfam America organized relief missions for victims in the flooded areas of the Mekong delta. We committed $200,000 in direct relief for communities within the Mekong River Basin. In one mission to Long An Province, 200 hundred villagers received a shipment of 215 water filtration systems, blankets and mosquito nets, and 88 pounds of rice for each of the 215 households, as well as 129 fishnets and 115 small boats.
- The Oxfam America-supported Can Gio Mangrove Restoration Project in Vietnam received international recognition as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (the first in Vietnam).
Recent Activities
