An Old Story on Clear Path on Vermont TV

While uploading more videos to YouTube, I cam across this old piece on Clear Path from WCAX in Burlington, VT... this was back when our office was a a small room in our basement... we have since refurbished a garage for our headquarters...

Ho Van Lai's Story Posted to YouTube

I have posted another video to YOUTUBE today.

This is the story of Ho Van Lai... the video is a few years old, but the story is just as powerful as the day we filmed it. Ho Van Lai is doing very well these days! He walks easily on his prosthetics and is a happy young man!

Chi as Guest Blogger

Our own Chi will be guest blogging over at Blogidarity...!

Check out his first post here.

The True Cost of War

Sarah Holewinski from CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) penned an editorial for the Washington Post. A good read....

The True Cost Of War

By Sarah Holewinski
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A15

A year ago tomorrow, in Baghdad, a young woman from California was killed by a suicide bomb. Marla Ruzicka was working to get aid to Iraqi civilians harmed by U.S. military operations when her car and that of her colleague Faiz Ali Salim was destroyed on the now-infamous airport road.

Marla's legacy lives on in the countless people continuing her work and in the families she tried so hard to assist. Her help to victims of war should also be enshrined in our policies if we as a country are to be, as Marla put it, "just a little bit better."

To America's credit, we've made some progress on the issue of civilian casualties. The Pentagon has a program of condolence payments -- a way for the military on the ground to directly compensate a family for the death of a loved one.

Read the rest here.

A Comment on Ha from Blogidarity

Over on the Blogidarity blog, Rosa left this comment after my post on UXO survivor, Ha.

"James, thank you for sharing Ha's story, she is truly an inspiration for all of us.

In Hawaiian, ha means "the breath of life" and thus, it is an important part of the word aloha; your alo is your demeanor, and together, alo + ha, aloha is to celebrate one's inner spirit - a living from the inside out.

Indeed, Ha has been the breath of life and the spirit of her family, and it seems so fitting that she inspire us with the breath of life in our first Blogidarity campaign.
Mahalo nui, aloha e,
Rosa"

What a wonderful note... thank you Rosa... Rosa also commented on Blogidarity's work in her post on her site here

Blogidarity and Clear Path International

Hey.... this is pretty cool. Our friend, Felix Gerena, and a number of his friends that heard of us through the TomPeters.com community have started a site to help non-profits raise money and awareness for their programs.

The name of the project is BLOGIDARITY.

The first non-profit organization chose was ours! Pretty neat. Thanks guys!

Check out www.blogidarity.com to see a post from me regarding our good friend, Ha.

Many, many thanks to Felix and company...!

Preparing for Our Vietnam Trip- Community Service for CPI

My name is Maureen Hawe and I am traveling with 9 other students and 2 faculty members from Norwich University to Vietnam on a service-learning trip. The group is called NU Visions Abroad and is a community service organization at Norwich that travels to other countries to help out and learn. In the past they have travelled to other places such as Cook Islands off of New Zealand and Tanzania in Africa. Community service activities include teaching English to students and helping out in orphanages.

This year, the NU Visions Abroad program has scheduled a trip to Vietnam with Clear Path International, where we'll learn about the dangers of unexploded landmines and the effects they have on Vietnamese, along with participate in various community service activities. In preparation for our trip to Vietnam with CPI, we're required to do some community service for CPI. So, here we are in Dorset, VT staying at the Hathaway's for the weekend helping out with the organization.

So far all it has consisted of is folding some news letters and putting some inserts into them and seemingly endless data entry, and it seems like we're not really helping out all that much. However, after talking to Martha a little about about what we've done so far, I realize that it's small contributions like this that really do make the difference. For example, just the group of us folding the news letters have saved CPI a couple of hundreds of dollars, and, by simply putting the inserts in the new letters, we've saved Martha roughly 50 hours of her time.

Small acts of volunteering really make a difference. If everyone could contribute a bit of their time to a small organization once a week or even once a month, it helps. I strongly encourage all who are able to dedicate some time to vonlunteer work, whenever they can. One person really can make a significant difference!



The Norwich Group with CPI Executive Director, Martha Hathaway in CPI's backyard in Southern Vermont.

Clear Path Videos Being Uploaded to YOUTUBE

As an experiment, and trying any way possible to get our message to as many people as possible.... I am going to start uploading movies to www.youtube.com.

Here is the first, our informational video with music by Mickey Hart and narration by Corey Flintoff of National Public Radio: