MOST OUTSTANDING CULTURAL PROGRAM NOMINEE
Ole Miss Vietnamese American Student Association
culture show
Provide a detailed description of the event and the population it served. Details MUST include: date of event, number of participants, program purpose (goals, objectives, etc.) and use of resources (finances, community support, etc.).
On February 11, 2023, Ole VASA hosted its first culture show since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Culture Show is our way of celebrating Lunar New Year with performances, food, and arts and crafts and is the most culturally significant event of the year. We had our own general members perform for the fan dance, lion dance, and singing performances. However we also had Steven Tang, a Vietnamese, nonprofit magician from Memphis, perform as well. We obtained funding from our associated student body to pay local Asian businesses for catering and including food and drinks from a Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese restaurant within Oxford. For the crafts, we set up fan and lantern decorating and origami which was also funded by ASB. Since two of our e-board members were in Vietnam for winter break, they helped get us LNY decorations and shipped it to the U.S. To help advertise this event, we had our interns create a flyer and hang them around campus, posted our event on our university’s ForUM, and spread the word through social media, general meetings, and word of mouth. Our interns also created our backdrop from scratch with concrete columns and cardboard, decorating it with paint, glitter, and more which was a week long practice on top of their practice for fan dance and lion dance. To help set up for the event and serve food, we had our honors college advertise for volunteers since honors college students need a certain amount of volunteer hours per semester. Overall, we had 70 people come to our event with both a mix of Ole VASA general members and anyone else who was interested from the university and local community. Our e-board members and interns had a chance to develop their leadership and communication skills when planning this event and Ole VASA helped spread Vietnamese culture during the biggest Vietnamese holiday of the year.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
Our culture show was a way for our Vietnamese and other Asian-American students and members to celebrate Lunar New Year while they were away from home. Also living in a predominantly white area, we were able to showcase Vietnamese culture and diversity in a way that most people typically don’t see. Our culture show was open to the public and had free food for everyone that came. It also provided a chance to earn community service hours.
Did the organization overcome any challenges that arose while planning and implementing the cultural program/event? How?
At first we had issues with booking a venue and we were unsure whether or not we would get funding for the food from our ASB. Our first venue was not suitable for the crafts or food and took a long time to respond and ultimately ended up denying us. However, we were able to find another venue that was accessible to students because it was right off the main campus and had buses running the route to the location. We also had issues obtaining lion dancers or costumes since performers were not funded and most shops were not local. Luckily, because one of our GC connections we were able to find someone selling two lion costumes and an ông địa costume. Since this was our first culture show after COVID, it was an interesting challenge to plan logistics and get a good interest in the event. Last year, our turnout for our Lunar New Year event was small. However, since we had performances from our members along with free food and the proximity to campus, more people were inclined to show up.
