MOST OUTSTANDING ORGANIZATION NOMINEE
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY VIETNAMESE STUDENT ASSOCIATION
What are the purpose and goal(s) of your organization, and how has it met or exceeded those goals?
The purpose of our organization is to build a community among Vietnamese students, to represent the Mississippi State Vietnamese community in multicultural events, to raise awareness of Vietnamese culture, and to promote the rich Vietnamese heritage at Mississippi State University. We have met these goals by having events that promote Vietnamese language, foods, and tradition. This year we hosted a Lunar New Year festival that involved the Starkville community with Vietnamese culture, which has never been done before. We also started a new segment in our general meetings that it is called "Viet knowledge of the month." The segment consisted of foods, music, fashion, history, and difference in flags.
Address how your organization was outstanding in the following areas: recruitment, marketing, outreach to campus community, use of resources, officer training and event planning.
In 2009, our club was established with at most 15 people in the organization. Now we have at least 75 members in the club. Not only has it expanded, but the club has become more diverse. We marketed our club with our social media platforms, campus memo-boards, and etc. We went to numerous organization fairs where we normally recruit our members. As an E-board I believe we did an outstanding job marketing our club because we dedicated our time to pass out flyers and introduce interested parties into VSA. As for our resources we tried our best to satisfy our members needs whether it be a social event, food during meetings, and philanthropy. This year we cooked meals for our members every general meetings. We made spaghetti, fried rice, stir fried chicken, noodles, and etc!
Officer training is usually done through E-board meetings. In this organization no one is perfect, so we grow together throughout the year as an E-board. We have interns that shadow current officers, which allows them to learn about the current position. Camp delta, Leadership Retreat 6, and various of other events also helped a lot when it came to officer training. Overall, our E-board has tremendously improved since the beginning of the year. We learned how to communicate better. Lastly, event planning required many meetings and discussion about logistics, programming, funding, and location. This year, I feel like we worked so diligently planning our events that we barely have any problems! During our Tet Event, we planned everything to the brim. Overall, I believe that we had worked so hard this year to make MSUVSA bigger on campus and community. I believe that we have achieved our goal of spreading our culture and creating a family like community for our members.
How did the organization work together to maximize strengths and overcome weaknesses?
We had evaluation and open dialogues when problems occurred. Through this process we were able to understand each others sides and fix the problem for future reference. The main problem we had this year was communicating. Each members had different communicating styles so we had to learn to navigate through the year on how to better ourselves in that concept. I believe that is where we learned to trust and to communicate our concerns better. Overcoming these weaknesses maximized our capabilities to have better synergy in planning events and having a closer bond which allowed our members to feel more comfortable in VSA.
Provide specific examples of how the student group demonstrated growth and development in the 2018-2019 academic year.
This year, MSUVSA has made a positive impact in the Starkville community by selling boba, eggrolls, and having a festival that sold Vietnamese cuisine. MSUVSA also did many volunteer projects like going to the animal shelter, creating a booth for children to enjoy Halloween and helping other organization grow. We were able to help Filipino Student Association grow as a new organization. Our organization also made it in the news letter from our annual eggroll sales to Tet event! We had so much more planned but due to COVID-19 we were unable to have our annual Eggroll Bowl and collaboration with OLEVASA and USMVSA. However, I believe that our community and organization has expanded tremendously and the future of MSUVSA is brighter than ever.