Global Community Service Foundation, Free Wheelchair Mission and Dong Nai News to Support Humanitarian Project in Urban and Rural Areas This Spring Hanoi, Viet Nam & Fairfax, Virginia, U.S. (April 7, 2008)--Two U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are working with Viet Nam's Dong Nai News to provide more than 550 wheelchairs to disabled individuals throughout Viet Nam this spring.
Global Community Service Foundation (GCSF) and Free Wheelchair Mission (FWM) are teaming up with Dong Nai News to help disabled adults and children in central and southern Viet Nam by providing them this essential means of personal mobility. "Global Community Service Foundation is honored to be working with Free Wheelchair Mission and Dong Nai News to improve the quality of life for countless disabled people and their families," said GCSF Founder & President Marcia Selva. "This collaboration has been remarkable and truly demonstrates the power of teamwork, cooperation and cultural understanding." The wheelchairs will arrive in Viet Nam from the U.S. in early April. They will be assembled and distributed later this month by volunteers from Thien Ha Services Trade Co., Ltd. and Vy Phuong Trade & Services Co., Ltd. The distribution will start in mid-April and continue into May with wheelchairs being donated to disabled individuals living throughout central and southern Viet Nam-ranging from major cities to the country's rural areas.
Thien Ha Services Trade Co., Ltd. will manage wheelchair delivery for southeast Vietnam and the Central Highlands while Vy Phuong Trade & Services Co., Ltd. will coordinate deliveries in southwest Viet Nam and the Mekong Delta area. When this current project is completed, GCSF and FWM will have distributed more than 1,600 wheelchairs in Viet Nam over the past three years. In 2006 and again in 2007 the two charities in conjunction with the Quang Tri Fatherland Front Committee distributed 550 wheelchairs to disabled individuals in Quang Tri Province.
Without the collaborative efforts of these groups and Dong Nai News many of disable people in Viet Nam would continue to struggle with their ability to get around and to make a living wage for their families, Selva said. Viet Nam has more than five million physically disabled people-many of whom were injured by a landmine or unexploded ordnance (UXO) that was left throughout the countryside following the end of the war in 1975. Nearly 350,000 tons of land mines and UXO from both sides of the conflict remain scattered throughout the land.
These lethal remnants of the American War continue to pose a deadly threat to Viet Nam's people, especially its younger citizens living in rural areas. About Global Community Service Foundation Global Community Service Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-area 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to reduce poverty in Southeast Asia through the development and implementation of sustainable community-based projects in Burma and Viet Nam.
GCSF is a licensed non-governmental organization in Viet Nam, where it has completed a wide variety of humanitarian projects ranging from building housing for the Da Nang Street Children's Program to providing socio-economic opportunities for the blind in Dong Ha town. Web site: www.globalcommunityservice.org.
About Free Wheelchair Mission Free Wheelchair Mission, the Orange County, Calif. based non-profit organization, is committed to providing the transforming gift of mobility to the physically disabled poor in developing countries.
Free Wheelchair Mission creatively partners with like-minded international humanitarian and indigenous organizations. The group plans to distribute 20 million wheelchairs by 2010. Started in 2001, the organization has distributed more than 200,000 wheelchairs worldwide. Web site: www.freewheelchairmission.org.
Contact:
Web site: www.freewheelchairmission.org.
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