|
PRESS RELEASE
Date: June 9, 2008
Contact: Nguyen
Cong Nghia, Vietnam Book Drive Project Manager
Phone: 1-019-636-2424. www.veffa.org/vnbookdrive
The Vietnam
Education Foundation Fellows Association (VEFFA) and Hanoi University of
Technology (HUT) hold an open ceremony for their joint library, the HUT-VEFFA
Library.
6.12.2008. The Vietnam Education
Foundation Fellows Association (VEFFA) is pleased to announce that the opening
ceremony of the HUT-VEFFA Library will be held today. The HUT-VEFFA library is
located within the Ta Quang Buu Library of Hanoi University of Technology (HUT).
The HUT-VEFFA library is a result of the Vietnam Book Drive, a collaborated
project between VEFFA and HUT. The project was launched in September, 2007 to
improve access to quality resources for education and research. The Vietnam
Education Foundation (VEF) fellows collected donated textbooks and research materials from professors, students
and interested people across universities in the US. The HUT-VEFFA library
provides free access to those resources to all students and faculty at HUT and
other universities in Vietnam.
Within
5 months since the project kick-off, the Vietnam Book Drive attracted
tremendous support at more than 30 top American universities. By the end of
2007, the project received monetary donations totaling more than 10,000 USD
from the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) and individuals and book donations of
more than 1,000 science and engineering textbooks and a great number of scientific
journals. In March 2008, the first project milestone was achieved as Hanoi
University of Technology received the first 750 books from VEFFA. These books
become the initial resources of the HUT-VEFFA library.
Our goals for the
year 2008 are to receive USD 5,000 and 2,000 books in monetary donations and
book donations, respectively. The project has an ambitious plan for a bus tour
with transits at some large US university campuses to pick up donated books in
December 2008. The bus will arrive in Washington DC, where the annual VEF
fellows’ conference 2009 is held from January 3-6, 2009. Washington DC is also
where VEFFA plans to ship the books collected throughout 2008 to Vietnam. The
bus tour is organized both to reduce the book shipping cost and also to raise
awareness of the project to potential supporters in the US.
Reducing transportation
costs is one high priority for VEFFA to optimize its project resources. VEFFA
encourages and advocates the project’s potential partners to cooperate with us.
Ho Chi Minh City University of Technique (HCMUT) in the South and Vinh
University (VU) in the Central of Vietnam, the VEFFA project’s partners-to-be,
agreed that they will cover all the book shipping costs from the US to Vietnam.
In 2008, VEFFA will sign a Memorandum of Understanding with each university for
the establishment of the HCMUT-VEFFA and VU-VEFFA libraries similar to the
HUT-VEFFA library. VEFFA commits to deliver the collected books to the three
partnered libraries to help increase access to textbook and research materials
for the local faculty and students. VEFFA continues to seek out innovative
ideas that could result in achieving more quality academic books and research
materials for the project.
We
would like to acknowledge the generous donation of USD1000 from the staff of
the Vietnamese Embassy in the US. We are grateful for all the support from our project
donors, from all the VEF fellows and other students who helped in the process
of book collection, transportation and facilitation of the project.
|
