WHWV provides help directly to individuals or communities impoverished by war; the organization partners with other nongovernmental organizations to provide services as needed. We have no shortage of challenges or ideas; we are limited only by the amount of resources we have to share.
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Donations to WHWV.ORG Fund the work in Laos: Helping people victimized by war.
In These Times – “Ban The Cluster Bomb”
More than 100 countries have agreed to stop using them. Guess which one hasn’t. By BRIAN COOK In late 2001, Soraj Ghulam Habib, a 10-year-old boy living in Herat Province in western Afghanistan, was walking home from a picnic with his cousin and some friends when he noticed a yellow canister. Because its color...
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Milwaukee Magazine: The Insider, “Bombs Away”
A retired Wisconsin principal now digs for explosives. Jim Harris crouches on one mud-stained knee, gingerly probing the dirt around a fist-sized bomb. A boy found it while digging for insects in the southern Laotian village of Phonephanpek. Harris is calm, but concerned. The hour is late, the sun painting everything ochre. “I hate...
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Transporting patients to a hospital.
Vientiane, Laos Peoples Democratic Republic Hospitals in Laos lack many of the resources that you would expect to see in an American or European hospital. Most notably, patients have to make do without the support of nurses and aides. When people check into a Lao hospital they must bring with them a family member who...
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Students at a Wisconsin school conduct service learning project and assist hospital patients.
Vientiane, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic Yai and I were both apprehensive about our trip from Odoumsouk village to the city of Vientiane. Its less than 300 miles from point to point but in Laos the rigors of a journey are never measured in miles. We’ve never traveled from our camp to the capital without having...
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A boy rolls a bomb under Yai’s bed.
Nakai District - Khammouan Province - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic It wasn’t the first time that someone has walked into our house and tried to hand over a bomb, so you would think we’d be more practiced, patient and understanding. Truth be told, it’s not the sort of thing you ever get used to. And it’s...
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Bomb Fishing
A young widow discusses the accident that killed her husband. They were a poor couple who had recently experienced the death of their only child. The man envisioned using explosives harvested from old ordnance to stun fish, a practice the Lao call “bomb fishing.” His desperate effort led to his death. WHWV produced this...
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Performing simple daily tasks can cost you your life in Laos.
Nakai District - Khammuan Province - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic Eleven young men from a village near Lak Sao, up in Bolikhamsai Province, came down to the Nakai plateau for a weeklong fishing trip. They had hoped to lay in a sizable store of fish to supplement their food supplies back home. I suspect that the...
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New, more stable boats arrive.
Nakai District - Khammouan Province- Lao Peoples Democratic Republic Last month I wrote about the young man who drowned in the reservoir near Nakai Tai Village. A couple of ironic events followed quickly in the aftermath of that event. Within days of my telling readers that I avoid using village boats except as a last...
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