NEW YORK – Clear Path International has received a $50,000 grant from the Adopt-A-Minefield® Campaign of the United Nations Association of the USA for its humanitarian mine action work in the region around the former Demilitarized Zone in central Vietnam.

“We are extremely grateful for Adopt-A-Minefield’s generous endorsement and support of our efforts to help families recover from the trauma of peacetime ordnance explosions,” said Martha Hathaway, executive director of Clear Path International, which is based in Dorset, Vermont.

“We are honored to be working for the world’s premier grassroots fundraising
and advocacy organization for humanitarian mine action,” Hathaway said.

Last fall, UNA-USA’s President William Luers announced that Clear Path International had been selected by his organization’s Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign as its implementing partner of its newly formed survivor assistance program in Vietnam.

Luers said Adopt-A-Minefield, which counts Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills -McCartney among its goodwill ambassadors and donors, would start raising funds for Clear Path’s medical and social services for landmine survivors and their families.

The $50,000 donation by Adopt-A-Minefield to Clear Path International will help provide much-needed services to survivor families in the DMZ area, particularly in Quang Tri Province hit hard by cluster bombs from the war in Vietnam. Clear Path offers emergency medical care, orthopedic surgery, prosthetics and rehabilitation, education support, household improvement grants and income-generating assistance.

Adopt-A-Minefield engages individuals, community groups and businesses in the United Nations efforts to resolve the global landmine crisis. The Campaign helps save lives by raising funds for mine clearance and survivor assistance, and by raising awareness about the landmine problem. To date, the Campaign has raised funds to clear over 8 million square meters of land in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Mozambique, and Vietnam.

Since its founding in 2000, Clear Path International has assisted hundreds of survivors in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and removed life-threatening explosives from communities in central Vietnam. It has also sent critical care medical equipment and supplies to hospitals in the mine-affected countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Jordan, Uganda, Colombia and the Philippines.