MOST OUTSTANDING ORGANIZATION NOMINEE
Vietnamese Student Organization at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette
What are the purpose and goal(s) of your organization, and how has it met or exceeded those goals?
Vsoul’s mission is to spread appreciation and awareness for Vietnamese culture through social, cultural, and philanthropic events. This year we hosted many events and participated in on campus events where we incorporated cultural practices and spread information about Vietnamese culture. We also strive to create a community where students can enjoy the company of others in their free time by coming to our events and having fun. Our goals for this year were to grow the organization, its presence in the GC region and on campus, and to emphasize the culture aspect of our mission. We were able to exceed these goals by being proactive about reaching out to our members to attend events through our social media and personally, doing a lot of fundraising to support our organization and for date auction, and we added segments in our general meetings to educate our members about Vietnamese culture which we called “food for thought about Vietnamese culture”. The club was also able to grow by us being more active in our own campus by participating in intramural sports, campus events, and other student organizations invited the organization to attend their events. This was all thanks to the planning and efforts of the eboard and also the support we got from our dedicated members.
Address how your organization was outstanding in the following areas: recruitment, marketing, outreach to campus community, use of resources, officer training and event planning.
This year the organization did an amazing job at recruitment by participating in on-campus student organization recruitment fairs and also having a strong presence on campus. We participated in a lot of intramural sports and convinced a lot of people to join from there. We also focused a lot of our recruitment attention on GC by recommending our members to attend the GC events held like date auction and GC Olympics. We would have carpool sheets for out of state events so that our members would be more inclined to come if an eboard member or someone else would drive them or ride with them. Also encouraging them to participate in pandan pals to expand their network in the region. We would use discord, Facebook, instagram, and word of mouth to spread information about all our events. For bigger events we would post flyers on campus to gain more traction for events from the general student body that weren’t a part of the organization already. This year vsoul was also more active on campus and with other student organizations by planning collaborative events. We partnered with the international student organization to host a global cafe where we served a drink and dish from our culture; we attended many university held events for student organizations under Vsoul’s name to boost awareness. This year there were only two returning eboard members so there was fresh new board for the most part that required some nurturing in professional development. The past eboard and this year’s senior advisors helped to make the transition easier by sitting down with them and explaining the responsible of their role and the resources they may need to succeed. We were also encouraged to attend LR9 to further their professional development and officer training. This preparation helped to strengthen our event planning and we were able to produce some really great events that our members and also we could enjoy. We were also able to stay on track of events and set clear plans by having weekly meetings to discuss events coming up and debrief on events that recently passed. Vsou also allowed the opportunity for our members to volunteer to help execute events which we feel helped members understand the level of effort it takes to have successful events.
How did the organization work together to maximize strengths and overcome weaknesses?
This year vsoul maximized our strengths to overcome weaknesses by stressing the importance of communication. We would frequently text in our eboard group chats to make sure we had everything accounted for and coordinated with everyone. We also had debriefs about every event we ran in our eboard meetings listing the pros, cons, and deltas of these events. During the transition to the spring semester, we accumulated every debrief we ever had about events to reflect on them to see how we could improve the organization to run more efficiently. Through this process, the eboard was able to breakdown the weaknesses and mistakes we saw to learn from them. We also had our own V-day which was a weekend of leadership workshops hosted by our senior advisors so that the eboard could form closer bonds with each other and learn how to work together as a team towards a common goal.
Provide specific examples of how the student group demonstrated growth and development in the 2021-2022 academic year.
This year the organization took a big step towards growth and laying out the foundation for a bright future. The organization had 24 new members join this year along with our returning members for a total of over 50+ members. The majority of our new members were freshman who had a really great first year in the organization and made a lot connections in VSOUL and UVSAGC which has made them excited to come back next year. New freshmen are vital to the future of the organization and since the return from covid those numbers have continued to increase. We not only increased the amount of paid members we had this year, but the organization also reached a bigger part of the population on campus. We connected with many new faces and spread awareness about the organization by having bake sales, food sales, and humiliations on campus. These events helped us a lot to get in front of people that didn’t know about the organization or any of our events, but the main goal was to fundraise money for the organization. This year we were able to increase our finances by over 200% from what we had at the end of last year’s term. This achievement significantly changes the future of the organization for the better. It gives the next eboards the possibility to scale up events. With more financial cushion they will be able to generate better events which may be able to attract more people to join the organization.