This was one of the earlier visions of UVSA, which analyzes the problems of earlier organizations and a proposed solution. The modern incarnation of UVSA is different, but the organizational issues that need to be addressed are no different. Vision
To establish a network of Vietnamese youth with the capacity
to participate in global affairs while sharing their heritage, culture and
history in the pursuit of friendly relations among all Vietnamese youth and the
world.
Objectives
- Creating
a sustainable communication infrastructure to allow the sharing of
informational resources among all Vietnamese youth.
- Taking
initiative in providing exposure to Vietnamese culture to the public.
- Working
towards a prosperous, creative, free, and democratic Vietnamese nation and
its satellite communities.
- Development
of young leaders necesesary to carry out such objectives.
BackgroundA prosperous, creative, free, and democratic Vietnam will allow Vietnam to truly participate in the global economy, politics, the issues, and affairs (e.g. Olympics). Without appearing overly abstract, I will describe its importance from the individual level up.
An example issue I see is Vietnamese who hate being Vietnamese. This probably relates to the generation gap where stories are not being told that the youth could be proud of. This could also be that they see Vietnam as deplorable (since it is not considered a global power), and thus become ashamed of coming from such a country. The reasons vary, but I suspect that if Vietnam commanded the respect of the world in the same way Japan has as a country of similar size, this would help reduce that sense of shame.
The generation gap or lack of story sharing comes from the problem of being in a host country that does not care about preserving Vietnamese heritage. This may relate to language barriers, or lack of media that appeals to youth. If it is a language barrier, then we do not have sufficient classes or an immersive learning environment (e.g. alternative schools) that can service the growing number of youth. Such an environment require a strong number of teachers, institutions, and parental support. The number of qualified teachers is small because we do not have sufficient teachers, a problem remedied if they were brought from Vietnam, or if the profession was encouraged locally. Qualifications in Vietnam are subpar; the degrees earned in Vietnam have no weight in other countries. Thus Vietnam needs to create a stronger education system. In the meantime, they can send exchange students to study abroad to supplement the deficiency in the education system. However there exists very little exposure of exchange students to diasporic students, adding to the cultural gap problem.
If it is the lack of relevant media, then we have a problem with efficient distribution of such media, or its quality, diversity, or relevance. Nonprofits can only do so much; we need the power of capitalism to allow this industry to grow. However in Vietnam, although it has capitalism, there is heavy censorship, which affects what Vietnamese youth nationally and abroad have access to. Capitalism at this point can also work against the culture, as in the case of the U.S. film industry that prefers to use stereotypical Asian characters because the market for “good films” is not garnering enough attention of the industry. If Vietnamse youth do not have access to cultural materials, they will turn towards mainstream media, eroding exposure to Vietnamese heritage. There is nothing wrong with mainstream media, but if the vision is to share our heritage, culture, and history, the youth must have exposure to such materials.
This is just a brief glimpse at the complexity of the
problems that the Vietnamese community face. All of these issues are related,
so work must occur on all fronts. Trying to achieve a prosperous, creative,
free, and democratic Vietnam
is a monumental task, which requires a lot of collaboration with major players
and the support of the public. In regards to the Vietnamese youth, the problem
is one of extreme segmentation and isolation due to geography, culture, and
lack of leadership. A strong network is
needed before the youth can play a role in shaping Vietnam, or even their local
communities.
Proposal and Analysis
The approach to achieving the objectives aforementioned
requires us to work on them simultaneously.
On the first objective of creating a communications network,
we need an organization that is properly structured so that leaders are not
bogged down by bureaucracy, bias, overload, or neglect. This objective deals
with creating a coalition.
On the second objective, VSAs already take the initiative in
increasing cultural exposure through cultural shows. However, there far more
other ways of doing this, such as supporting the construction of a Vietnamese
library (or even doing weekend readings of stories to children), taking an
active role in organizing Tet or Tet Trung Thu festival and parade, teaching
through the use of the Vietnamese American curriculum about the refugee
experience, supporting Vietnamese films by volunteering at major film
festivals, etc. This objective deals with cultural programming.
On the third objective, we must work with nonprofits, NGOs,
businesses and political entities and help them achieve reasonable goals in the
pursuit of transitioning Vietnam
to a democratic state, or improving the health of the Vietnamese satellite
communities. An example is VSAs supporting Aid to Children Without Parents
which helps orphaned children in Vietnam become self-sufficient
through health care, school construction, proper nutrition, etc. VSAs may also
also do something as small yet meaningful as helping clean up a local temple.
This objective deals with community service.
With regards to the fourth objective, leadership development
must encompass the previous three objectives: coalition-building, cultural
awareness, and community service. Such an approach will give us well-rounded
leaders.
Organizational Structure
As of this writing, there are top-down and the ground-up
approaches to building a coalition. The ground-up approach is basically
students coming together to form a VSA at their local campus. Several VSAs may
do activities together, and so on. The top-down approach is where a strong
coalition existing in one region encourages another region to create their own
coalition. This is how the international coalition Lên Đường encouraged the
formation of national level coalition uNAVSA (more about what these entities
are later).
Mạng Lưới Tuổi Trẻ Việt Nam Lên Đường (or simply Lên Đường)
is the international-level body, which so far is split into four continents: Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia. Each continent is overseen with a regional
representative. Only Asia has no known national-level organizations of
Vietnamese youth (with the exception of Vietnam).
North America has a
continental-level organization known as the Union of North American Vietnamese
Student Associations, or uNAVSA. It is split into 11 regions, each with a
representative. The regions are Canada East, Canada West, Pacific Northwest,
Northern California, Southern California, Rocky Mountains, Southern U.S.,
Southeastern U.S., Atlantic States, New England
States, and Midwestern States.
Some of these regions contain a regional-level organization, namely the Midwestern
States (IVSU), New England States (IVSA-NE), California South (UVSA Southern
California), and to some degree the Southern U.S.
(I will learn about the social structures at an upcoming conference).
The proposal calls for a regional-level organization in Northern California. In the past, regional-level
organizations included:
- Union
of Vietnamese Student Associations of Northern
California (c. 1980s)
- Association
of Bay Area Colleges
and Universities (c. 1990s)
- Mạng
Lưới Tuổi Trẻ Việt Nam
Thắp Sáng Niềm Tin Bắc California (Light
Up Our Faith Vietnamese Youth Network of Northern
California) (1999)
- Vietnamese
Student Association Link (1999–2003)
- United
Vietnamese Student Associations of Northern California (2002–present).
Subregional organizations include:
- Bay
Area Vietnamese Student Association (of East Bay)
(1999–present)
- Vietnamese
Student Association Union (of Sacramento)
(2004–present)
- There
appears to be the vestiges of another subregional organization called
Vietnamese Student Association United (of Stockton) (2005–present), spearheaded by
San Joaquín Delta College VSA
Because of the numerous attempts at coalition-building, it
is clear that the VSAs want to be united. However, the lack of continuity
suggest that the youth are repeating the same mistakes. What does not work?
Unfortunately, we do not have access to much of that body of knowledge. But
first, let’s look at why many of these organizations failed.
The Problems Facing Coalition-BuildersThe Light Up Our Faith Vietnamese Youth Network of Northern California seemed to have been born following the incident in which Truong Van Tran displayed pictures of Ho Chi Minh on his video storefront in Orange County. The Network formed and organized the April 30th rally in San Jose. Since then there were no major activities organized, and the organization dissolved in the same year. The principals set forth seems to be very biased towards promoting freedom and democracy in Vietnam. While noble, it ignores much of the domestic issues that have a greater bearing on the local Vietnamese youth. I suspect this is where the homeland-oriented issues of the 1st and 1.5 generation constrast against the domestic issues concerning the 2nd generation. The structure of the Network is three parts: the assembly composed of youth groups, individuals, and professionals, and an organizing committee with a variable number of officers. The third part comprise a support network of partnering organizations. Why this organization failed is of critical concern to the new UVSA. I suspect it is the overemphasis on issues in Vietnam while ignoring domestic affairs. Or perhaps the leaders never developed a strategic plan. Or maybe there were insufficient multi-VSA social activities. But we do know that following its demise two new organizations were founded: BAVSA and VSAL.
What was known about the problem with VSAL was that its structure was the following: every school was represented in a council with three elected secretary generals. My brief interviews with students in the final year cited that the secretary generals would often promote their own school’s agenda, rather than working on projects in which all schools can participate. Looking at the website (vsalink.org), in the first few years VSAL did have collaborative projects in the areas of cultural programming and leadership development, so it appeared to do well. But the continuity was interrupted in 2003. The last known VSAL activity is at the end of 2004 with a dance. Somehow the leaders stopped organizing leadership camps.
My own views on this problem seems to be that the distances between the schools are so wide, that attempting to hold a region-wide meeting on a regular basis is taxing for the schools living on the extremities. Also, we are beginning to see several Vietnamese American community cores aside from San Jose: San Francisco, Oakland, Stockton, and Sacramento. This causes the VSAs around those cores to be more involved with their local community rather than San Jose, which is where many of VSAL activities were located. This is probably why we see VSAU Sacramento forming recently after VSAL died, although there is no evidence that school members of VSAU Sacramento were once a part of VSAL. On a personal note, my attempts at joining VSAL were rejected because I went to a private art school which had no VSA. VSAL’s membership policy were school-based, and that entry to the mailing list required that you were a member of one of the represented schools.
BAVSA seems to be doing okay, although its membership consists only of high school VSAs in the East Bay, which is fine, but it doesn’t do anything for the VSAs in the rest of the region. We do see that BAVSA is focused around the Oakland Vietnamese community core.
When UVSA (2002) went to register its name to the state, we discovered the existence of a UVSA (c. 1980s) that existed before. When we learned that the organization was in bad financial standing, we change the “Union” to “United” to maintain the acronym, but incoporate as a new organization. Therefore the new UVSA needs to have fiscal checks and balances, and audited by an independent tax group as well.
In summary, the problems of the past organizations were: (1) a narrow platform, (2) a shift in issues focus due to generational transition, (3) new community cores, (4) broad geographical distances, (5) leadership that failed to protect the integrity of the coalition by prioritizing their own school first, (6) lack of multiple-VSA social networking activities (7) limited scope of membership, and (8) fiscal mismanagement. I should also add that I had a lot of trouble finding out about these past organizations because of the lack of continuity of these coalitions, which means (9) institutional memory is almost nonexistent.The Structure of the New UnionRealizing the problems that prior organizations faced, I propose the following, and explain how the arrangement could resolve some of the problems discussed. The structural proposal calls for 6 organs: (1) assembly of collegiate VSAs, (2) assembly of high school VSAs, (3) district boards, (4) regional board, (5) general staves, (6) board of advisors.
The Union will be divided into districts, each encompassing a community core: Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Stockton. Each district will have representatives from each school (the assembly), and along with it a District Board, which at minimum must have a President and Secretary/Treasurer. The District Board has the responsibility to keep all of the schools within its district informed and involved, and to appoint general staff members as needed. The District Board cannot simultaneously be an officer of a VSA, as that would cause a kind of bias on the agenda that resulted in the dissolution of VSAL.
This approach is in line with how other community-service organizations maintain a network, such as Key Club / Circle K, Interact Club, Lions Club, etc. These districts also serve as a sensible way for VSAs to collaborate with a few other VSAs on activities such as social events (whereas collaborating with ALL other VSAs on social events does not make logistical sense). It can also serve as a way to resolve the problem of schedule conflicts (i.e. schools of the same district should not have public events on the same date, but schools of different districts is probably safe to do so). So as an example, each district might end up being responsible for participating in the Tet Festival of their local community.
The high school assembly will have more districts than their college counterparts because of the number of high schools is far greater. By having both high school and college VSAs, we broaden the scope of the membership. Also, by offering positions within the general staff, we can allow disenfranchised Vietnamese students who come from schools with no VSAs (e.g. SFSU’s VAA was dead for several years) to participate in Vietnamese American youth affairs.
The Regional Board will consist of one representative of each district, and a sixth person to act as chair whose concern is the integrity of the Union (since the other reps will be focused on their own districts). This is pretty much in line with how Lên Đường is running.
The Board of Advisors will have the responsibility of performing audits (although the schools are welcome to do this as well), thus minimizing fiscal mismanagement.
The General Staff of each district will have ad hoc committees for projects as necessary, but there must be two important standing committees on the regional level: (a) policy advisory committee and (b) an alumni committee. A policy advisory committee is necessary to do public research and to become specialists with certain issues, whether it is human trafficking or the size of the Vietnamese film industry. Because the number of issues is many, specialization is needed. The Boards and the assemblies will benefit having experts in the field. Such committee members may also organize projects if they so choose. This resolves the issue of having a narrow platform. Unfortunately resources (especially attention) allow only a few issues to be worked upon with emphasis. But that does not mean the “smaller” issues should be neglected completely; having a point person in a particular issue ensures visibility of the issue to all Vietnamese youth across Northern California. This becomes especially important when generational transitioning brings in a focus on different issues, in which case the “dormant” issues will not have to go through the entire research process from scratch.
The alumni committee is responisble for maintaining contact with the Union’s former members, officers, and staff. This is important for maintaining institutional memory, in case something from the past needs clarification.Social Networking Activities
It is important that the network of VSAs have district-level
and regional-level social activities to maintain active bonds. This resolves
the problem of lack of continuous contact among VSAs. The current UVSA
Constitution offers the following ideas for social activities:
- Winter
Formal
- End-of-the-Year
Banquet
- Sports
Tournaments
- Bonfires
- Social
Mixers (e.g. ice skating)
- Leadership
Retreats (e.g. Camps)
Cultural Programming
If our objective is to increase cultural exposure to the
public, then we must have programming that target different segments of the
public. In general we can say that there are programming catered to fluent
speakers of Vietnamese, non-fluent speakers, those familiar with Vietnamese
culture, those unfamiliar with Vietnamese culture, and those who are redefining
Vietnamese American culture (come on, hip-hop in our shows is obviously a
contemporary thing).
Because we are working from a regional / district
perspective, cultural activities must allow for participation by multiple VSAs.
UVSA currently offers the following activities as stated in their Constitution:
- Tết
Nguyên Đán
- Black
April
- Ước
Vọng Tương Lai Cultural Show
I offer a few more ideas:
- Tết
Trung Thu
- VSA
Culture Night Circuit
- Asian
Pacific American Heritage Month
- Ý Thức
Publications
- Vietnamese
American Student Film Festival
By no means is this list comprehensive, but having input
from all leaders should generate more ideas as needed. We should note that not
all VSAs currently are able to organize or participate in these events, even
though I feel they should be considered core cultural activities for all VSAs.
Community ServiceThe philosophy behind doing community service is that students become engaged in the improvement of their community, thus gaining a sense of doing something meaningful. You can only go so far in terms of having fun. If you have a role in building the community, a piece of your legacy is part of that community. One of the things I notice is that a lot of Vietnamese youth are involved in community service organizations, such as Key Club or Interact Club. Such involvement is done in the mainstream, which, while good, does not lend to cultural exposure. We know that there are youth who want to serve the community and learn and shape their cultural heritage. The divorce between culture and community service has been going on since VSAs were first formed in the 1970s and 1980s. Some have kept the two functions integrated, while others have resulted in a split in the association. Such a dichotomy brings about imbalanced leadership: either those whose only concern are artistic expression without caring for the community, or those who work on the improvement of the community while neglecting their heritage, and hence, the point of being Vietnamese. It is about time to dissolve the barriers between the two, and engage youths in both: that Vietnamese culture includes caring about one’s community, and that improving the community is done with an awareness of our ideals, beliefs, history, and aesthetics.
Since community service depends largely on the platform of the organization, I will leave this area open to the leaders who will be deciding on what issues to focus on, as well as finding people to fill the policy advisory committee. But as an example, past VSAs were involved in combatting human trafficking, looking at sweatshop labor, dealing with health issues such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B. Another issue of concern is the lack of financial stability for the members of VSAs which prevents a VSA from being stable.Implementation into Existing FrameworksMany of the sub-regional networks are in place, such as VSA Union of Sacramento, BAVSA, etc. while others need oversight on their eventual development (e.g. San Francisco-based VSAs). The goal is to unify the VSAs into one identity while respecting their individual autonomy, something that can never be stated enough.
The first step of implementation is the uNAVSA Conference coming to San Jose in July 2006. This will be the starting point in which all leaders from across Northern California will have met for the first time in years. From there representatives from each district will be chosen, and a common project will be chosen for the national body, what we call the Collective Philanthropy Project. This will also be a common project for all of Northern California to collectively focus upon.
The second step is to do a joint leadership camp between Northern California leaders with Southern California leaders so that wisdom between the two regions can be shared. What works, what doesn’t, and what is new. A leadership camp for the high school VSAs is also necessary, and should be distinct from the collegiate camp because of the difference in their focus. Leaders will be appointed so that activities can be planned and carried out.
The third and all other succeeding steps will be looking after the districts and their respective VSAs and ensuring there is a consistent amount of activities throughout the year.
The fourth step is important; a yearend banquet involving all districts is needed following a UVSA election or appointments. Succession is one of the difficult hurdles for many past unions, and I suspect the lack of elections is the cause of it. Of course, elections without candidates is also a problem; without strong VSAs, they won’t be able to field a candidate to work in UVSA. |
