The Vietnamese Boat People (VBP) podcast and nonprofit in 2021 launched the VBP Journeys map, a community-driven platform created to encourage intergenerational dialogue within families and communities, to share stories and histories, and to have a space to contribute photos, artifacts and legacies.
With a diaspora including multi-generational families living all over the world, the map brings the stories of this diverse global community together to paint a more comprehensive picture of its complex journeys and lived experiences.
Supported by a 2021 Incubation Grant and additional COVID-19 relief funds from the New Jersey Council of Humanities, the VBP launched a beta version of the story map on its website at www.vietnameseboatpeople.org/journeys.
The interactive map supplements the organization’s existing podcast, videocasts, blog, each of which preserves and shares stories of Vietnamese refugees who fled their country amid horrible living conditions after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
Individuals who were part of this mass exodus between 1975 and the early 1990s are known as the “Boat People.” Despite their fleeing the country being illegal, hundreds of thousands organized escapes through underground groups in makeshift boats in hopes of providing a better and freer future for their children.
“Their stories are ones of loss, separation, survival and resiliency,” the organization states. “The Vietnamese Boat People generation is an aging population with stories of courage and hope and refugee experiences that need to be preserved as part of the Vietnam War history.”
To learn more, explore or share a story, or make a donation, visit www.vietnameseboatpeople.org.
