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Hoang
Yen Vo, M.A. |
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Hoang Yen
Vo received her Bachelor of Arts, Economics and Education, from the University of
Economics and the University of Education in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
During her university studies, Yen met and talked with people with
disabilities about the possibility of setting up a community-based
disability organization. She and her colleagues have developed a
newsletter 'Integration' which has been sent to individuals and groups
with disabilities and government agencies relating to disability issues to
share disability-related information as well as to give people with
disabilities a voice for their concerns. In December 1999, to celebrate
the International Day of People with Disabilities, Yen and 12 other
friends took pictures of people with disabilities in their daily life and
held a photography exhibition named 'Focusing on Equal Opportunities,'
which became the hot news in newspapers for a long time because it made
the community recognize for the first time that people with disabilities
were a part of community, but had been neglected. In October 2000, Yen
became vice-president of the Disabled Youth Association of Ho Chi Minh
City, the first and only official organization of people with disabilities
in Vietnam. In December 2000, she was invited by the Japan Council of
Independent Living Centers, as the only representative with a disability
from Vietnam, to the Second Summit International Conference on Independent
Living in Honolulu, Hawaii. This is the first time she had ever heard the
term "Independent Living." Yen
has been selected as a 2000-2001 Ford Foundation International Fellow and
is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Human Development from the
University of Kansas. Her ambition is to enhance her knowledge on
disabilities and independent living as much as possible so that some day
she can return and help increase the quality of the life of people with
disabilities in her home country of Vietnam. |
