Book project results in donations of more than $10,000 to help refugees
Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) and photographer Brian Đoàn have concluded the book project “The Forgotten Ones.” The project has raised $12,238.30 since the book was published in February of 2005.

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WESTMINSTER, Calif. – Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) and photographer Brian Đoàn have concluded the book project “The Forgotten Ones.” The project has raised $12,238.30 since the book was published in February of 2005. Nearly $8,000 was donated to the Vietnamese Community in the Philippines in August 2005 to help the refugees with transportation from Pala-wan to Manila in order to complete the interview process before resettling in a third country. Funding of $2,500 was donated to VOICE (Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for the Conscience Empowerment) to help the refugees resettle in the new country. Another $1,500 was granted to Đoàn to continue his photography project “Vietnamese Diaspora.” The remaining money was given to VAALA’s book project “Ngh? Thu?t T?o H́nh Vi?t Nam Hi?n Đ?i” (“The Contemporary Visual Art of Vi?t Nam”) by Hùynh H?u ?y, which will be published at the end of this calendar year. “The Forgotten Ones” was published to document a historical phenomenon of the Vietnamese refugee period and to raise public awareness on the limbo situation of the last refugees. The 110-page book. featuring 30 black-and-white photographs, reflects the life of the refugees in the Palawan Camp.  The book also contains many facts about the boat people experience. At the time of the book’s release, about 2,000 people were waiting hopelessly in the Philippines to resettle in a third country. Through his lens, Đoàn documented the mental as well as the physical exhaustion of the refugees. “I am very pleased to see that the book … has a very happy ending; a majority of ‘the forgotten ones’ has now resettled in a third country after years of being stateless,” Đoàn said. “I hope they are getting a lot of help and will have a better life to compensate for what they have been through.”
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