A two-day field visit reinforces a decade-long partnership for victim assistance and explosive ordnance risk education.

On 28 and 29 May 2026, a delegation from the Embassy of Ireland in Viet Nam, led by Ms. Edel Cribbin, Head of Development Cooperation, visited the RENEW Center for Rehabilitation and Disability Support in Quang Tri Province. After first meeting the RENEW team over a Zoom call in March 2026, Ms. Cribbin was now able to step onto the ground in Quang Tri and see the work for herself. The two-day visit was an opportunity for the Embassy to observe activities of the Victim Assistance, Disability Support, and Explosive Ordnance Risk Education project that it has funded for the past decade, and to meet directly with families whose lives have been shaped by the long shadow of war and the steady work of recovery.

In Khe Sanh: thirteen years on

In Ruong Village, Khe Sanh Commune, the delegation visited the family of Mr. Ho Van Y. At the age of seventeen, Mr. Y was tilling a coffee farm near the former Ta Con Airbase when he struck an unexploded bomb in the soil. He lost his right leg in the accident. Thirteen years on, he has received three successive prostheses from the RENEW Center, raises four breeding cows on the surrounding hillside, and lives in a stilt house with his wife and three young sons.

The delegation sat with the family inside the house, listened to Mr. Y describe the rhythm of his days, and handed over essential household equipment: a water filter, an electric fan, a food cabinet, and a rice cooker. A small fire pit in the corner of the home, with a kettle resting on a three-legged trivet, spoke of the modest scale on which a family in this mountainous commune still builds a life.

In Huong Hiep: a life rebuilt

In Phu An Village, Huong Hiep Commune, the delegation met Mr. Ho Van My and his wife, Ms. Ho Thi Tran. Mr. My was blinded in a landmine accident at the age of seventeen, while working the soil near his family’s home. Ms. Tran was born with congenital leg atrophy. The two married in 2022 and have three children together. Their youngest daughter is currently studying Japanese in Hanoi, with the hope of one day working abroad.

Last month, after a needs assessment by RENEW staff, the family received a breeding cow. The animal now grazes near the house. For a couple who have lived most of their lives with disability and very limited means, the cow is more than livestock. It is a quiet symbol of a life being rebuilt, one season at a time.

At the Visitor Center: education that prevents tragedy

On the morning of 29 May, the delegation visited the Mine Action Visitor Center, where four Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE) activity groups were running simultaneously: outdoor mine-risk games and safety marking, a general orientation on the causes of accidents and safe behavior, an immersive experience using the RENEW AR augmented reality application, and a peer education model in which students role-play to understand and walk alongside persons with disabilities.

The activities, designed for school-aged children, brought to life the kind of patient, hands-on risk education that helps prevent the next generation of tragedies, of the kind that the families in Khe Sanh and Huong Hiep have lived through.

Looking ahead together

In the Center’s meeting room, the leadership of the RENEW Center and the program managers of the two project components briefed Ms. Cribbin and her colleagues on activity progress and looked ahead to the next phase of work. The conversation also touched on the scope of project activities across the communes of Cua Tung, Gio Linh, Hieu Giang, Trieu Phong, Trieu Binh, and Vinh Dinh, and the encouraging fact that no UXO accidents have been recorded in the project areas during the current reporting period.

A decade of accompaniment

Project RENEW expresses its sincere gratitude to the Government of Ireland, through the Embassy of Ireland in Viet Nam, for its enduring partnership: funding Explosive Ordnance Risk Education since 2015, and Victim Assistance and Disability Support since 2016.

A decade of accompaniment has translated, in homes from Khe Sanh to Huong Hiep, into prostheses and breeding cows, into water filters and rice cookers, and above all into the quiet certainty that the most vulnerable are not being left behind.

Go raibh maith agaibh.

Project RENEW
Trieu Phong and Cam Lo Districts, Quang Tri Province
15 January 2015

In the first week of the New Year 2015, 160 items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) were safely removed by RENEW’s mobile Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams from people’s gardens, rice fields, plantations and roadsides in two districts of Quang Tri Province, Cam Lo and Trieu Phong.

[clear]

Most of the munitions, 141 of them, were destroyed thanks to the alert awareness of local people who have become the “eyes and ears” of RENEW EOD teams over the years.  Using Project RENEW’s toll-free hotline telephone number, 355411, local residents called 24 times last week to report UXO discoveries to Project RENEW teams.

Five items of UXO, including one mortar, one hand grenade, two 40mm grenades and one projectile, await demolition in An Thai Village of Cam Tuyen Commune after RENEW’s EOD Team No. 3 responded to three UXO callouts on 5 January 2014.

Last Tuesday in An Hung Village, members of the Le family were renovating the temple for the upcoming Lunar New Year festival when they suddenly found a cluster bomb, locally known as a bombie, adjacent to the structure.  Mr. Le Van Thuc picked up his cell phone and immediately reported the sighting to RENEW. Half an hour later, a RENEW EOD team arrived and safely destroyed the bomb in place.

EOD team members preparing for safe disposal of the cluster bomb found near a family temple in An Hung Village.

The same day, Tran Huu Ha, a Youth Union officer in Cam Hieu Commune, ran into two youngsters who were collecting wild vegetables.  They had found some UXOs they were trying to dismantle.  Ha stopped them immediately.  “I know how dangerous these unexploded projectiles are,” he said.  “They are very unstable and may explode if disturbed, so I asked the boys to stop and I called Project RENEW immediately.” Ha is a member of RENEW’s Community Reporting Network which educates people about UXO risks and encourages them to report UXO sightings to RENEW for timely and safe removal.

EOD Team Leader Duong Duc Tam coordinated with Ha and followed his directions to the site of the munitions, where they found a cache of unexploded projectiles, some of which had been unearthed by the two boys who thought they might sell the scrap for extra money.

“Obviously that was a cache of UXO,” said Team Leader Tam.  “It took our team the rest of today to investigate and remove all the muntions.  Thanks to Mr. Ha’s prompt action,” he added, “we may have prevented a tragic accident from happening.”

A total of 105 items of 37mm projectiles which RENEW’s EOD team determined were stable enough to move, were safely transported from the location of this cache to RENEW’s central demolition site for later destruction.

The past five years have seen a measurable reduction of UXO accidents in Quang Tri Province.  However, the most recent accidents were mainly related to scrap metal scavenging.  In 2014, Quang Tri recorded four accidents which resulted in eight injuries.  Five of the injuries occurred in an explosion at a scrap yard as workers were loading scrap material onto a truck.

It is essential to sustain public and school-based Risk Education campaigns to reinforce people’s awareness of UXO threats.  UXO cleanup will have to continue for years to come in Quang Tri Province, but in the meantime Quang Tri residents can be safe, if they understand how to protect themselves and their families from injury and death and how to report munitions for safe removal and destruction.