Hi Everyone,
I'm volunteering as a mentor for a mentorship program called Project MotiVATe (www.projectmotivate.org). It's a mentorship for Vietnamese-American teens. I was one of the coordinators last year and now I'm a mentor this year.
We hold workshops and monthly events that address Vietnamese culture, promote civic engagement, and encourage higher education. I volunteer every Wednesday night there and also some weekends. I continue to volunteer at Project MotiVATe because I want to play my part in instilling in the youth a pride and appreciation for their culture, their language, their family, and their community. It's a really great program, and everyone from the board members to coordinators to mentors are ALL VOLUNTEERS.
Right now, we have a higher demand for mentees to get into the program than we can accommodate for with our current resources and space and had to turn away a few of the mentee applicants. Although the program is made up of all volunteers, it actually takes about $15,000 to run this program to rent the space, provide food, get quality guest speakers, and more.
In 2 weeks, we have our Gala fundraiser coming up to raise money for our program (http://projectmotivate.org/gala/?page_id=2 ). It takes place Friday March 25, 2011 at 6:30pm at Mon Cheri Restaurant in Anaheim. Please come and support.
Gala is an evening long event including 8-course meal, opportunity drawing, auction, and entertainment provided by various performers. It is also an opportunity for the community to learn about the services that Project MotiVATe offers its at-risk Vietnamese American Youth and support its efforts for tomorrow’s success.
Tickets are $50 (Students $40), and you can buy from me or you can buy online at http://projectmotivate.eventbrite.com .
If you cannot attend, you can also donate to the cause and the program by:
The money gets routed through Network for Good and deposited with OCAPICA, our fiscal sponsor. Website is here:
Please make sure you fill out "Project MotiVATe" in the designation box.
2) Write a donation check. Checks need to be made out to "OCAPICA," with "Project Motivate" in the memo line.
Please mail to me or hand the check to me, and I can bring it to OCAPICA:
Jennifer Pham
11931 Euclid St.
Garden Grove, CA 92802
Or you can also mail it straight to OCAPICA:
Attn: Leslie Nguyen
12900 Garden Grove Blvd. Suite 214A
Garden Grove, CA 92843
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR TIME!
You can read more about my experience with Project MotiVATe here:
When I was younger, I rarely spoke Vietnamese in public, like most Vietnamese-American teens. I couldn't put a name to it at the time, but now looking back on it, I would call it "shame." I didn't mind admitting I was Vietnamese, but I didn't want to speak Vietnamese in front of classmates for fear of being labeled a "FOB" (Fresh Off the Boat). It was my effort to avoid that stereotype.
It wasn't until college that I learned to appreciate my Vietnamese heritage. Through mentoring Asian American students at Berkeley and studying abroad in Vietnam, I came to better understand my Vietnamese-American identity. These organizations helped me mature as a person and share with the youth what I had learned: we are the aftermath of a war that had nothing to do with us but everything to do with us, a war that placed Southeast Asian faces on a continent far from its origin. We are our own community, a diaspora of Southeast Asians in the U.S. in search of a better life.
As a result of the War in Southeast Asia, also commonly known as the Vietnam War, our grandparents, our parents, our aunts, our uncles, our siblings are looked down upon on a daily basis for talking with an accent. They are the minorities that are discriminated and stereotyped in a country in which they don’t look like the majority. They are the laborers that we, their children, blamed and resented for not spending more time with us because they, not wanted to, but needed to work long hours to raise us.
However, let’s not forget that these people are the few who daringly risked everything to leave the country with only faith and hope in their pockets. They are also the courageous activists who chose to take a stand, who refused to succumb to the chains of unspoken injustices, unexplained imprisonments, and unjustified killings. They are the sacrificing solders, the courageous fighters, the daring heroes, the resilient survivors that have crossed oceans, skies, fields, and war zones to get us into school, to get us a safe education, so that we could have a better future than they did.
Despite the large number of Vietnamese-Americans living in Orange County, there are currently no mentoring programs available free of charge to academically and socially at-risk Vietnamese youth. Addressing this need, Project MotiVATe offers a culturally relevant mentorship program as well as free academic tutoring every week—at no financial cost to families. With an entirely volunteer-run staff, Project MotiVATe also offers workshops and monthly events that address Vietnamese culture, promote civic engagement, and encourage higher education. I continue to volunteer at Project MotiVATe because I want to play my part in instilling in the youth a pride and appreciation for their culture, their language, their family, and their community.
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