A Lucky Boy In Central Vietnam

This report came in a couple weeks ago from our office in Central Vietnam: An accident happened to an eight-year-old boy (Nguyen Chi Luong-born in 1997) in Phu Loc district of Thua Thien Hue province on the ending days of the year 2005. It was on Dec 13^th when the boy came home from school. He saw unknown ordnance on the way and picked it up (It was reported later that it is a fuse). Because of curiosity, he tried to tamper it. And then came the explosion at 5 p.m. The boy received a lot of fragments on the chest and two arms and lost 2 fingers in the left hand. Luckily, no other kids were involved the that accident. The boy was then taken to the local health center and first aid and thereafter transferred to Hue Central Hospital for intensive care and treatment. He had two surgeries for skin transplant already.

CPI Blog Functionality Restored

Thanks to Lisa from MovableType, as of 10:30 on New Year's Eve, the CPI Blog is functioning again. For that matter, so is the rest of the site. This site is largely run on MovableType thanks to the brilliant design ideas of Scott Harden and Jason Brush formerly of Subvergent. I had applied an update to the MovableType Software back in September and somehow I screwed up the installation. To make a long boring story short... I finally (again thanks to Lisa) got everything back in order today. Hopefully there are still some people out there getting our feed.... and if you are, thanks for your patience... and pass it around will ya??

CPI Raises Substantial Funding in 4th Quarter

Good news in our most recent press release: During the fourth quarter of 2005, Clear Path International raised more than $275,000 for landmine accident survivors in Southeast Asia through major grants, special events and grassroots contributions, the organization said this week. In October, Clear Path’s fifth anniversary benefit dinner at the Columbia Tower Club in Seattle, attended by many of its island supporters, raised nearly $30,000. This included a $5,000 underwriting grant from the Seattle-based law firm Marler Clark, LLC. In December, the humanitarian mine action group received word from the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis of $180,000 in grants for Clear Path’s survivor assistance projects in Vietnam and Cambodia during the next two years. The largest two-year grant from McKnight, for $105,000, will support a joint project of CPI and Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development in Phnom Penh to build a rice mill in Battambang Province, western Cambodia. The proposed rice mill and adjoining facility in Battambang will accommodate the training of landmine accident survivors and their families in hands-on agricultural and technical vocational skills. The total budget for the mill, whose production is expected to make the training program self-sustaining within three years, is $327,000. The other two-year McKnight grant for $75,000 will support Clear Path International’s survivor assistance program in central Vietnam, where the organization provides medical and socioeconomic assistance to hundreds of families in three districts north and south of the former Demilitarized Zone that once split the country in two. From the Mark D. Johnson Charitable Trust in California, Clear Path received a $50,000 gift, with $30,000 for survivor assistance in all three program countries �“ Vietnam, Cambodia and the Thai-Burma border area �“ and $20,000 for a media project to raise awareness of the landmine problem in Southeast Asia. In addition, Clear Path received a $5,000 grant for its survivor assistance and mine action work from the Olive Higgins Prouty Foundation and $4,000 from John and Hazel Griffith of San Jose. The remainder of the $275,000 came from individual donations. Since it was founded on Bainbridge Island in 2000, Clear Path has provided assistance to more than 2,300 landmine accident survivors and their families in Southeast Asia, and sent 60 containers with $4 million worth of medical equipment and supplies to dozens of hospitals in 20 countries affected by the presence of landmines.

Movie About Arn Chorn-Pond Now on Netflix

img src="http://cdn.nflximg.com/us/boxshots/large/70022296.jpg" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="5">The Flute Player, the beautiful, Emmy nominated film by Jocelyn Glatzer about our good friend and Advisory Board member, Arn Chorn-Pond is now available on Neflix! This is GREAT news as this film was previously hard to get. About the film: After the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, 9-year-old Arn Chorn-Pond was thrust into the darkness of Cambodia's Killing Fields. For four years, Arn's musical talent kept him from perishing in a genocide that took the lives of 2 million Cambodians. Now, after living in the United States for 20 years, Arn faces the dark shadows of his war-torn past as he fights to save Cambodia's once-outlawed traditional music from extinction. Follow this link to get the film from Netflix!

CPI Supporter Bikes Across Vietnam

Clear Path International supporter, Van Lai will be cycling from Saigon to Hanoi with an organization called Symbiosis Expeditions, to raise awareness and money for Clear Path International. Her trip will take her through the villages and outskirts of Vietnam, and will include a visit to Clear Path’s facilities, totaling 1,700 kilometers in 20 days. This trip is dedicated to her mother and father, and her late uncle, Le Thuc Anh who was killed by a land mine during the Vietnam war.