Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 10/5/04 Section: Campus News

Photo by Catherine Burmeister / Daily Staff A student at Van Lang Vietnamese Language and Culture Education Center raises her hand to be called on by helping teacher Nam Nguyen Sunday morning. [Click to enlarge]

Volunteers for Vietnamese organizations in the Bay Area strive to instill the importance of education in youngsters. Van Lang, the Association for Viet Arts and Aid to Children Without Parents are three organizations dedicated to promoting and preserving Vietnamese culture.

Van Lang is an organization that works mostly with young children in order to educate them about their culture.

Tuan Le, the director of the program, said one of the goals of the program is to "keep kids busy so that they stay out of trouble."

Le said the program started 21 years ago and has been going strong ever since. He has been volunteering in the organization for 18 years, he said.

Le said he thinks the program is important because many Vietnamese- American teenagers don't care about where they came from. He said they usually start caring about it after they graduate from college.

The Van Lang program attempts to get these individuals to start caring about their culture earlier by providing them with an environment that facilitates learning about Vietnamese history and culture, he said.

Currently, the Van Lang program has more than 100 volunteers. These volunteers come from a multitude of professional backgrounds including students, professors and engineers, Le said.

The program runs on a semester system, which is approximately five months. This semester, 1,017 students are enrolled in the program, Le said. Classes are held at Gunderson High School, located in South San Jose every Sunday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The course curriculum focuses on Vietnamese culture, history and language, Le said.

The cost of the program is $50 per semester. This covers the cost of renting the building and textbooks for the children, Le said.

Hien Do, a professor of social science at San Jose State University said the Van Lang program is definitely an organization that serves as a role model to the Vietnamese community.

"I think the program is an example of a role model to those who know about it, to the students who participate in it, to the parents who send the children and to the larger community because of the tremendous amount of dedication and perseverance that they demonstrate," Do said.

Another San Jose-based organization that focuses on the Vietnamese community is the Association for Viet Arts. The program's main objective is to promote Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American artwork in the community of San Jose, said Mai Bui, who is president and chairwoman of the organization.

Diana Tran, community relations coordinator for university housing services at SJSU, said the Association for Viet Arts "is a really great organization because it provides Vietnamese artists with a venue to showcase their artwork."

Another organization that serves as a role model to the Vietnamese community and is also located in San Jose is Aid to Children Without Parents.

Benjamin Lee, chairman of the organization, said their main goal is to help children get the education and healthcare they deserve.

Lee said the volunteers working at the San Jose center come from many different professional backgrounds, such as doctors, nurses and engineers.

Aid to Children Without Parents has an offi ce in San Jose, but they mainly help children who are living in Vietnam, Lee said.

The new schools program targets children who live in very rural areas of Vietnam and who do not have access to education.

This program is involved with the building of schools in these areas, Lee said.

The mobile healthcare program targets children who live in areas where they do not have access to healthcare. With this mobile unit, children are given necessary vaccinations and checkups, Lee said.

The emergency relief program gives aid to victims of natural disasters such as floods, Lee said.

In order to assist children and their families living in Vietnam, Aid to Children Without Parents has workers stationed in Vietnam. Unlike the volunteers at the San Jose center, these workers are paid.

These individuals include social workers that visit schools in Vietnam every few months to check up on the children, and doctors as well as coordinators for the many programs that the organization has created, Lee said.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools