Students mark anniversary of end of Vietnam War

SUNY College at Brockport Vietnam Program students are marking the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, April 30, on the Brockport campus and in Danang in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The SUNY program provides students the opportunity for international study in Vietnam. SUNY Brockport's Vietnam Program is the only year-round American university program in Vietnam today. Besides the opportunity for international study, the program gives students the opportunity to take their college program to a level seldom experienced by their peers - through service to the people of Vietnam.

Linking studies with a service experience, students act as goodwill ambassadors, building relationships between the United States and Vietnam. This experience serves both the college students and Vietnam's poorest of the poor and those still suffering the effects of a war that ended 30 years ago.

Vietnam Program students spend 18 weeks in study and service in Danang, the same place where America's troop build up began in the mid-1960s. Now a peaceful community, it struggles with the monumental task of providing help to the more than two million Vietnamese who suffer cancers, birth defects and other physical problems caused by the wartime use of the Agent Orange defoliant dioxin.

The Vietnam Program works in cooperation with the international charity, Danang/Quang Nam Fund, Inc. The collaboration provides aid to families facing challenges similar to the young mother and her children. Through the program, SUNY Brockport students also distribute food to more than 500 families living in a local garbage dump, provide food and medicine to a leper colony, volunteer at a group home for disabled children, work with families with disabled children and serve a nursing home for the elderly.

Kenneth Herrmann, associate professor who oversees the program, was a sergeant with the U.S. Army infantry unit in Vietnam during the late 1960s and returned to Vietnam in 1998 to revisit the village near Danang where he was an advisor with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade.

The SUNY Brockport Vietnam Program is accepting applications for the program's next session in Danang, July to November. For information, contact Herrmann at (585) 395-2119, (585) 395-2324 or www.danangquangnamfund.org.