AID grant no. 493-0002-G-00-2376-00 to World Vision Relief and Development, Inc. to provide support to a program of rehabilitation assistance to Laotian handicapped persons

(WVRD) to fund rehabilitation assistance in Xieng Khouang and Houaphan provinces and the prefecture of Vientiane in Laos. The grant will fund animal husbandry skills training, hazard awareness education, prosthetics skills training, and a special prosthetics task force. This grant builds on an earlier project funded in 10/90. Activities will be carried out in close collaboration with the National Rehabilitation Center (NRC) of Laos and other government agencies. The primary sites for the animal husbandry skills training and hazard awareness education will be in northeast Laos in areas where the bombing was heaviest and the villages are very poor. The animal husbandry training will be provided to 500 people (handicapped persons and their families); each participant will receive 2 head of livestock (1,000 total). Fish pond projects may be substituted at villagers" request. The hazard awareness program will teach 1,000 children and adults about the hazards of unexploded bombs, fragmentation bombs, and land mines. The prosthetics skills training will be provided at NRC centers and will include intensive courses for 25 prosthetists and 25 other medical professionals in each course. This training will be based in part on the field experiences of the project"s special prosthetics task force, which will provide more durable and higher quality artificial limbs for 30 lower-limb amputees in remote and rural villages in Xieng Khouang and Houaphan provinces, where existing Lao prosthetics services are nonexistent or inadequate.