May 2, 2007 - Internal Vice President’s Report on the State of the Union

UVSA was founded upon the four pillars of Solidarity, Community Involvement, Cultural Preservation and Leadership Development. These pillars shall be the metrics on which to measure the progress of our Vietnamese youths regionally.

Solidarity

In 2004, UVSA changed from a high school VSA network to a hybrid collegiate and high school network. In fall of 2006, UVSA began its first year into outreaching to the collegiate VSAs. We made presentations at the following schools to make a case for joining UVSA: SJSU, De Anza College, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, SCU, Stanford, CSUEB, San Joaquin Delta College, Mission College, Evergreen Valley College, SJCC, Monterey Peninsula College and UCSF. In December 2006, San Jose State University VSA hosted their Winter Formal, and managed to bring several colleges together.

In January 2007, a Summit was held in order to layout plans on building the relationship among the schools. The outcome of the 5-school summit (CSUEB, De Anza, SJSU, UC Berkeley, UC Davis) was to have a Scavenger Hunt / Picnic among the 5 schools, as well as to begin the formation of an Intercollegiate Council (ICC) consisting of one representative from each school. After Tết, however, 2 officers resigned from the ICC (and their VSAs), and one school was unable to send a representative. The Scavenger Hunt will most likely be postponed until next year as Culture Show Season (March through June) tied up the schools in making any progress on that activity. Still, these schools came out to each other’s events in order to show support.

In October 2006, Mid-Autumn Festival organizers hosted its first annual High School Summit involving at least 10 high schools; UVSA has had contact lists from its prior years to bring as many high schools as it could. In February 2007, high schools officers were selected to organize a follow-up High School Summit. Representatives from 5 high schools engaged in a productive discussion, and to oversee the network of 15 high schools. These officers supported each other by attending culture shows, organizing a group viewing of the film Journey From The Fall, and worked with UVSA on the issue of Human Trafficking at our April 2007 Charity Gala.

In summary, the collegiate network faltered somewhat in not being able to jointly organize an activity for this year. The Internal Vice President recommends increasing the number of representatives to two per school in the beginning stages of UVSA in order to ensure a viable relationship, much like every State within the Senate has two Senators. For the upcoming year, more schools need to be represented and to support each other’s events. The high school network is coming together steadily. UVSA should take a greater role in the Mid-Autumn Festival’s High School Summit to facilitate more productive dialogue among the schools, as well as having the officers more directly involved in running their own summit.

Community Involvement

In October 2006, in partnership with Youngster Production, UVSA co-organized a fundraiser drive to raise funds to support direct relief of the victims of Typhoon Xangsane. In April 2007, UVSA organized the Take A Chance On Me Charity Gala as part of the Union of North America VSA’s Collective Philanthropy Project campaign. The proceeds of this dinner went to support the Catalyst Foundation’s Rach Gia Project, which aimed at building homes, library, and a park for children living within the landfills of Vietnam. UC Santa Cruz VSA, UC Berkeley VSA, UC Davis VSA and Wilcox High School VSA were also participants in this campaign.

VSAs have continued to support the downtown Vietnamese Spring Festival & Parade by marching in the parade. Various VSAs have engaged in different community service activities independently, such as the Cupertino Lunar New Year Festival, Children Discovery Museum’s Dragon Festival, and other various Tết and Tết Trung Thu events.

For Black April, several VSAs helped organize a grassroots marketing effort to promote the film Journey From The Fall, and San Jose’s Camera 12 made a new record for highest grossing film of all time.

Many organizations continue to ask the VSAs for support, but there has no unifying body to coordinate these efforts across the region. Consequently, UVSA established the Commission system in order to help VSAs network along common interests. So far, VSA members of the Health Commission coordinated a Hepatitis B awareness campaign during Tết. The other Commissions have not organized any projects as of yet, as they are slowly building their contact lists.

Because of the lack of coordination, UVSA and its Vietnamese youth constituents cannot, with any clarity, measure our involvement with the Community. The Internal Vice President recommends holding a Conference that invites all youth leaders (not just VSA officers) in order to engage in dialogue and determine how youths should be involved in the Community. This Conference will allow the delegates to set a regional agenda, otherwise known as the Roadmap, that UVSA, its members, and constituent body can work together to achieve. Only through a Conference will a Commission system be able to take root, and that UVSA can then measure our youth’s development in the various fields of Health, Technology, Media, Arts, Entertainment, Resources, Faith, Humanitarian, Education, Civics, Diversity, and Recreation.

Cultural Preservation

Journey From The Fall was a milestone within the Vietnamese American community, providing youths a glimpse into the history of their parents and grandparents. While many students appreciated the movie, a few anonymous reviewers have found difficulty in connecting with the film. UVSA and the VSAs struggle to bring awareness of our history to the general youth population.

VSAs continue to organize cultural shows as part of a long history of tradition. However, UVSA and the VSAs have not set metrics as to what Cultural Preservation entails. Is it the teaching of history? Teaching of language? Is it the teaching of Vietnamese cultural practices to the mainstream? How can we measure our progress on Cultural Preservation?

While there are language classes and various community events aimed at teaching people more about Vietnamese culture, such as the Vietnamese Authors Presentation series, or the Áo Dài Exhibition, many of these facilities and cultural programming are not fully benefiting the youths. The problem can be traced into either lack of leadership initiative among youths to organize a presence, lack of knowledge about these events, or lack of input from youths whenever these events are organized.

The Internal Vice President believes that any event that attempts to reach out to the youths must involve them in the organizing process for any degree of success to occur. The Internal Vice President also believes that if there is a Conference, a discussion on Cultural Preservation and its practical application in improving the lives of the youths would be critical making any progress in this area.

Leadership Development

In July 2006, UVSA organized the Union of North American VSA (uNAVSA) Conference at San Jose State University. There is no question the valuable learning experiences that benefited two of the Executive Board members of UVSA. What UVSA is now concerned with is whether this skill can be handed down to the next generation of leaders.

Since the Conference, the Internal Vice President has set out looking for youth leaders to begin the process of defining a Leadership Development strategy for the Northern California region, codenamed Anh Chi Em (ACE) Initiative. So far a few hand-selected youths are encouraged to attend leadership events, such as student conferences (e.g. VASCON), leadership camps (e.g. UVSA Southern California Leadership Camp), leadership development workshops, etc. that are mainly organized not by youths or not by Northern California. Therefore while programs do exist to help train Vietnamese youths to become better leaders, a lack of a coordinated region-wide strategy leaves leadership development a hit-and-miss proposition.

An example of a lack of leadership development strategy for the region would be the high school VSA coalition in the Oakland area called the Bay Area VSA (BAVSA). The high school students had no mentors to teach them how to properly organize a culture show, such as proper budgeting, best practices at soliciting sponsors, or effective marketing. Last year BAVSA was unable to hold a culture show in March because their source of funding (a grant) dried up, and they did not know who to turn to for help. The Internal Vice President scheduled emergency meetings with the officers of BAVSA to oversee their development. Their culture show was able to happen this year, although barely breaking even. Since then the Internal Vice President has tried to set up a High School Outreach Board consisting of college students to start the work on helping our high school siblings.

Leadership development can be traced to pan-ethnic communities such as the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute. But the fruits of that program end up benefiting APA-based organizations, which often end up benefiting largely non-Vietnamese constituents. There has been no visible strategy set to determine how Vietnamese youths can work with APA groups in order to bring the Vietnamese American Community closer to their fellow APA Communities, in part because there has been no viable Vietnamese youth network to work with the Vietnamese American Community. To paraphrase a student scholarship recipient, “We want to help improve our Community, but we don’t know how, or who to reach out to, or even know what the issues are. We need help.”

The Internal Vice President believes that the criteria for a Leadership Development strategy must firstly help sustain the VSA. Many campuses have seen the demise of their VSA chapter, including schools as large as UC Santa Cruz and SFSU. Part of this strategy is working with high school students so that as they enter college, they have the knowledge to help their college VSA. The second criteria of this strategy requires the engagement of youths in large, community projects that applies these leadership skills. A youth can only understand the full extent of her/his skill if she/he is entrusted to an important, meaningful task.

The Internal Vice President recommends organizing an Inter-VSA Scavenger Hunt for up-and-coming leaders, but ultimately, a Summit and/or Conference should be that large-scale project to help refine Leadership Development into a fine art. Where youths go from thereon would be handled by the Commissioners, which could be Mega Culture Shows (Entertainment), Tech Conferences (Technology), region-wide youth media network (Media), region-wide fundraiser to build schools in Vietnam (humanitarian), etc.

Bao Thien Ngo
Interim Internal Vice President, 2006–2008
United Vietnamese Student Associations of Northern California