My Son, Vietnam
Last Vestiges of the Champa Kingdom
Recovered carved stone objects at My Son.
During the three year project, careful attention was given to the training of the Vietnamese personnel. In fact, Vietnamese workers were mainly farmers without any experience in archaeological or conservation work. After this period, the workers, as well as the national officers, technicians and local staff dramatically improved their skills. The Vietnamese archaeologists, architects, geologists, geophysicists, surveyors, draftsmen and other workers acquired new knowledge regarding international standards of conservation.
GHF established a formal two-year education and outreach program for Vietnam’s World Heritage in Young Hands program at selected schools in Hoi An Ancient Town near My Son and in Quang Nam Province that were visited by over 900 Grand Circle Travel customers on their tours in 2005. The goals of this program is to increase awareness of the importance of World Heritage for the younger generation and their parents, and to educate local peoples as to the problems facing conservation and its potential to bring economic and cultural benefits to the surrounding communities and the nation as a whole. To this end GHF has hired one full time Vietnamese Program Manager for a two year period to implement the project’s activities related to education and outreach components in close cooperation with the UNESCO Vietnamese National Commission.
We have prepared to publish 1,000 Student Handbooks on Vietnam UNESCO natural and cultural World Heritage in Vietnamese / English and to distribute these handbooks to 40 schools in Hue and Hoi areas, as well as provide a two hour orientation for the use of the handbook at each of the 40 schools. At each school, we are carrying out two teacher training workshop, training at least one teacher from each of the 40 schools identified and, in close cooperation with the My Son site administration, we are coordinating site visits of local schools presenting the World Heritage education and outreach and presenting on World Heritage and World Heritage in Vietnam (Hue, Hoi An, etc.).
