MOST OUTSTANDING NEW EVENT NOMINEE
Mississippi State University Vietnamese Student Association
Tet Fair/Hoi Cho
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.), use of resources (finances, community support, etc.), and marketing techniques.
The event was held on Feb. 8, 2020 from 5 pm - 9 pm. We didn't get an accurate number, because it was open to all of the Starkville community and MSU students. If estimated approximately 100 people. Our main purpose of this event was to share a Tết festival similar to the festivals that are held at the Vietnamese churches in Louisiana during Lunars New Year. We wanted to share this experience with the Starkville community, which had never been done before. We provided traditional Vietnamese cuisine like Pho, spring rolls, shrimp chips, ché, and traditional Vietnamese sweets. We also created a fortune tree where everyone could write things they aspired to happen in the upcoming year. As for the games we had different booths that had these following games; Tiến lên 13, pin the tail on the rat, buckets (toss the ball in the bucket) and Bầu cua cá cọp. These games were created for adults as well as children! Throughout the event, we also fundraised for CPP in the process. We held this event at a local church in their community center, we paid the church $100. With that, they provided us with a spacious room, tables, chairs, and a kitchen. Everything else (food, decorations, games, etc) we provided ourselves. Admission was free to everyone! The only thing that needed to be paid for was the food and the games. Overall, our main goal was to share the Vietnamese culture with our community. This was an event that has never been done before, and during the event, we had multiple people come up and thank us for doing it. They praised the food and enjoyed seeing the traditional wear E-board wore.
What inspired your organization to create this new event?
What inspired us to make this event started out as we wanted to have a GC event. From there, it turned into wanting the Starkville community to be able to experience our culture first hand, instead of just eating at a simple restaurant and calling it a day.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
Our way of motivation was the food, normally our members go crazy when we have egg rolls and thai tea sales. By advertising them that we had homemade pho was a great motivation strategy. Another way was that we did “Pie an E-Board member”, they truly loved that. We also had raffles like an echo dot, a hydro flask, and this and last years shirts to raffle off. Not only did we have these strategies but we were asked to give an interview and was in the Starkville Newsletter! I believe that also gave our members more of a reason to come!
Did the organization overcome any challenges that arose while planning and implementing the event? How?
Lots of meetings to plan logistics, everything was planned elaborately before the day of the event even happened; if there was disagreement, we talked it out to see every point of view; we tried to stay as under budget as possible.
Additional Comments
For this being the first time we ever hosted this event, it went a lot smoother than planned. We really didn’t think the event was even going to happen because our eboard was split about doing it; however, we pushed through and found a cheap venue and planned the best we could. A lot of ideas were pitched and scratched, but in the end, the event turned out very successful. I feel as though we did a great job getting our community involved in the Tet event. To emphasize, some of the E-board members went out of their way to make this event happen so smoothly. They traveled 4 hours to gather the ingredients and decorations. Some of the E-board members also stayed up till 4 am in the morning to prepare the food and cook the pho. Personally, everyone worked so hard and diligently in making this event happen, As an E-board, we are most proud of this event.
Here is a quick video of the event!
https://youtu.be/FDxHFfFgHUw