Mark Conroy with teachers and students at EMWF built school in VN.
For the last 15 years retired Beekmantown dairy farmer Mark Conroy has been directing humanitarian development work in Vietnam for the East Meets West Foundation (EMWF). He only last year stepped down as Country Director and is now the foundation’s senior consultant who heads up the Da Nang, Viet Nam office. During those 15 years he has built over 303 schools affecting 45,751 students. Most are located in the countryside of Central Viet Nam.
The first schools built by East Meets West program were kindergartens the reason being that the government is not able to fund schools at that level and like Mr. Mortensen found in Afghanistan, that if classes were being held at all, it was in mere shacks.
Conroy started school program in 1995 and it was in Dai Loc west of Da Nang.”78% of the buildings in this area were completely destroyed by US bombing, napalming or by troops on the ground with Zippo lighters”.
“Actually we had a very difficult time in those days to locate the home hamlet of Le Thu, the Vietnamese –American who was financing the project, because they had all been renamed since the war ended. Added to that was the fact that roads too were nearly non existent; for next to nothing in Viet Nam at that time had been rebuilt since the war ended in 1975”.
“In fact that first school let to our arrest by the Peoples Committee of Dai Loc since at that time a permit was required to travel in most places in the country. Also, a partner is required for any development projects and that partner many times is the local peoples committee.”
EMWF than began on a somewhat regular basis building or remodeling elementary schools when ever enough funding showed up to complete a project.
“Then”, said Conroy, “Chuck Feeney showed up and EMW began a rapid rise and the school building program grew at that same pace.”
Mr. Feeney is the reclusive billionaire who founded Atlantic Philanthropies with funding from Duty Free Shoppes which had sold for over $3 billion USD. All of these monies went into his foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies. The initial grant from Atlantic Philanthropies to EMWF was for a One Hundred Thousand Dollars. The Vietnam based foundation was told to do what ever they wanted with it. A good portion went towards building a number of schools.
“One of the most interesting projects,” continued Conroy, “was sponsored by my mother, Mary W. Conroy. She had taught for many years in the Beekmantown District #1 one room brick school house on the corner of Route 9 and Point au Rouche Road, and upon hearing of the school shortage where I was working in Viet Nam offered to sponsor the school in Tra My. It’s the ‘Little Red School House’ for the minorities in Tra My.
For a period of time AP would match any funds that were donated for schools and at that time would not let it be known that they provided the funds. The donor plaque on the building listed “Golden Heart”. This lasted till Chuck Feeney‘s public statement that he was the source of funds for AP.
“It eventually got to the point where I had to hire a man full time to run the school building program and they’ve been built steady to this day,” said Conroy. Actually the building we now operate out of in Da Nang was built for the University of Danang with AP funding is the English Language Institute. It’s twelve stories high and was for a time the tallest building in this city.”
“We’ve built two schools for Boeing, the airplane manufacturer, in which they take great pride” said Mr. Conroy. “The first one is in Binh Tri a short drive from Danang. The two room kindergarten funded by Boeing in Binh Tri is named for Nguyen Tan Troi, a national hero who nearly blew the bridge in Saigon that Robert McNamara was crossing on his way to the US Embassy in 1968. The story goes that he was captured minuets before the Secretary of Defense crossed the bridge and was immediately taken out and shot. He refused to wear a blindfold and went down in a hail of bullets shouting “long live Ho Chi Minh”.
L to R - School principal, Mark Conroy, Minh Chau Nguyen, EMWF Country Director, Kevin Heise, Boeing Sales Rep. Viet Nam, Peoples Committee Chairman, US Ambassador to Viet Nam, Michael W. Michalak - Boeing funded elementary school in Thanh Tien, Viet Nam.
The latest Boeing school is located in the Mekong Delta town of Thanh Tien. The dedication ceremony was attended by the U S Ambassador to Viet Nam, Mr. Michael W. Michalak as well as representatives from Boeing and EMWF.
Mark Conroy as thus far overseen in the countryside of central Viet Nam, the construction of 303 schools which affected 45,751 students, installed 137 clean water systems affecting 1,108,634 people and 456 compassion homes which provided housing for 2,705 residents.
*A version of this article was published by the Press Republican on October 17, 2010.
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