Three Hamilton College students, Tiffany Ly ’20, Ngoc Ngo ’20, and Hyein Kim ’21, were recently recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) for their project on increasing access to reproductive health education and resources for Vietnamese women. Group members Kimberly Ly ’20 and Michelle Chung ’20 are currently studying abroad and were unable to attend.
The objective of the CGI U, launched by President Bill Clinton in 2007, is to engage potential future leaders on college campuses and honor them at an annual meeting. This year’s meeting was hosted by the University of Chicago.
After developing the project as Social Innovation Fellows at the Levitt Center last spring, the team’s application for the CGI U was accepted and their project was selected as “an exemplary approach to address a critical challenge.” Their plan for addressing global change (titled “Commitment to Action”) was featured during a work session addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health.
Upon learning that Vietnam’s abortion rate (40 percent) is the highest in Asia and among the highest in the world, the group began to research the issue, discovering that the country’s safe and accessible abortion practices make it the primary contraceptive method. They found that attitudes surrounding contraception within Vietnam are conservative, resulting in a stigma around the use of other contraceptive methods and a lack of reproductive health resources and education.
Since repeated abortions can have severe consequences on women’s mental and physical health, Tiffany Ly explained that the group’s goal was to “mitigate the stigma surrounding reproductive health in Vietnam and provide an opportunity for women to receive reproductive health education while ensuring that abortion remains a safe way for women to end an unwanted pregnancy.”
The group is currently in contact with the American Center at the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam in an effort to integrate reproductive health education into the Center’s regular programming and diminish the social stigma surrounding reproductive health.
Other Hamilton students who traveled to Chicago to attend this year’s CGI U include Aurora Cai ’21, who was honored for her work on a project in China to increase access to English language education for children of migrants to Chinese cities, and Anna Mowat ’18, who is a part of a group that assists homeowners in reducing their heating bills through physics-based modeling.
