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Project S.A.V.E. (Sisters Aiding Vietnamese Education)

April 2011 Alpha Delta Kappa Members' Visit to the Alpha Delta Kappa School

The Alpha Delta Kappa School was dedicated in Ta Rinh, Vietnam in September 2010!

Synergy makes things happen – fast! In just five short months, a primary school rose brick by brick from the steamy, monsoon-soaked soil and was dedicated on September 3 in the tiny subsistence-farming hamlet of Ta Rinh, located in the Nam Dong District, Thua Thien-Hue Province of Vietnam.

The five-room school was a collaborative project of Alpha Delta Kappa, a nearly 40,000-member international honorary organization of women educators headquartered in Kansas City, MO, and the Veterans Viet Nam Restoration Project (VVRP), a small non-governmental organization made up of American veterans of the Vietnam War. Alpha Delta Kappa members’ generous donations funded the materials for the school, the VVRP team along with members of the community provided the labor and the Nam Dong District government provided the land, technical assistance, and the ongoing operation of the school. According to VVRP, this was the very first VVRP project to be fully funded through the generosity of one organization -- Alpha Delta Kappa.

The dedication of the first primary school in Ta Rinh, approximately 40 miles southwest of Hue City, was a three-day celebration, attended by Alpha Delta Kappa’s International Executive Board Chairman Linda Rissel, Seaside Park, NJ, International President Jane Miller, Benton, KY, and Bud Bruton, Downingtown, PA, a member of the VVRP Board, along with members of the community and many Vietnamese dignitaries.

VVRP, founded in California in 1988, has coordinated 25 teams of veterans and family members who have provided 21 years of service working on humanitarian projects such as building health clinics, homes for disabled veterans, residential facilities for children and schools in rural areas of Vietnam. Paying all their own travel and living expenses to participate, nearly 200 veterans have returned to Vietnam in an effort to heal both the wounds of the war-torn country as well as their emotional and spiritual wounds suffered in the war.