MOST OUTSTANDING ORGANIZATION NOMINEE
Xavier University of Louisiana Vietnamese Association
What are the purpose and goal(s) of your organization, and how has it met or exceeded those goals?
XULAVA's three pillars are Culture, Professionalism, and Philanthropy. We fulfilled these three pillars to their absolute max this year by spreading the Vietnamese culture to more non-Vietnamese Xavier students than ever before, creating and enhancing more professional connections for XULAVA as well as our members, and organizing a community service effort unlike any other before it in addition to maintaining our usual contribution to the regional Culture Philanthropy Project. Details supporting these claims are below.
Address how your organization was outstanding in the following areas: recruitment, marketing, outreach to campus community, use of resources, officer training and event planning.
One of XULAVA's ongoing problems according to past and current members is not being as well known on Xavier's campus and not effectively reaching out to non-Vietnamese Xavier students on campus. Our recruitment and marketing this year completely turned this problem on its head because we used techniques that were not only more efficient, but more effective. For example, instead of posting physical fliers, we posted them digitally over every single monitor on campus and physically handed out the physical fliers directly to everyone. This bypassed the common problem of Xavier's administration limiting where we can and cannot post fliers and exponentially boosted the number of people we were able to reach on campus. This is because the monitors are scattered all over campus and are in three times as many rooms as the amount of places where we could actually post the fliers, and actually handing out the fliers allowed us to personally reach people and let them have a face, voice, and name to remember when they were considering whether or not to come the event. While this was much more effort put into recruitment and marketing than ever before, the results were astounding because the number of people who attended our events was consistently significant and the number of non-Vietnamese attendees was always much greater than what anyone could have expected. Our enhanced efforts in on-campus marketing produced highly enhanced results, and the exact numbers are below. In addition, we also utilized our tried and true methods of social media and email to reach out to past members as well as members who are rarely on campus and often commute instead. A common complaint for most events is that it's hard to find exact rooms and buildings. We used social media to overcome this by not only providing people with maps as usual, but also live real-time directions of how to best get to the room. Many people raved about how much they enjoyed us doing this because it provided them with visual landmarks, a true 3D sense of what to look for and where to go, and a method of directions that was infinitely better than the typical 2D map or list of words. As previously mentioned above and further elaborated below, XULAVA became extremely active on campus this year by largely increasing our number of non-Vietnamese members, making connections with other Xavier student organizations, such as Xavier MAX, ENACTUS, and all of the class councils of every single class, having executive members of Xavier administration attend all of our events, becoming a connecting link between Xavier's student body and Xavier's International Offices, and giving our members a true voice in what happens on campus by using our positions as student leaders to directly voice their concerns to both SGA as well as administration. XULAVA was the first ever club to be featured on the front page of Xavier's website in 2020, and our increased and truly prominent presence on campus was a major reason for that. This year, we were also able to truly collaborate with multiple student organizations on campus through a concerted effort to help a common cause. This common cause was aiding in the successful execution of the first ever Nola Nite Market and more details can be found in our application for "Most Outstanding Community Service/Involvement". In short, we all banded together by taking different roles and times to best maximize the amount of help Xavier University of Louisiana could provide to this event as a whole, instead of just as separate groups. The effort was a large success and these clubs had many other plans already laid out to continue working with us because of how much they enjoyed working with us. Officer training was quite exceptional this year and was required to be so because Xavier switched to an entirely different system that no previous XULAVA board had dealt with before. The executive board overcame this obstacle by taking the time to learn this new system and mastering it over the summer right after it was announced in June instead of waiting until August like many of the other organizations did. Because of this dedication to exceptional officer training, the board often worked like a well-oiled machine and overcame many obstacles that previous boards struggled with despite being on a familiar system that the previous board before them should have taught them. These problems included booking rooms, booking supplies, and dealing with the technology of Xavier in general. This year, our officers overcame all of that to the point where we never got rejected for a room request, we often had backup dates and locations just in case, we always had the proper number of tables and chairs set up well before we needed the room to start setting up, we were able to book supplies that previous boards didn't even know were available to them, such as a grand piano, table cloths, ice, cups, and even guest WiFi, and we had the personal numbers of Xavier staff who were dedicated to solving all of our technological and logistical problems. Because of this thoroughness with which we mastered this new Xavier system, event planning often proceeded with minimal difficulties because we always got the room we wanted on the date we wanted with the supplies we needed. If things went wrong or plans had to change, we also had backups with which we knew we could rely on. This was in stark contrast to last year's board who often got their room requests rejected, weren't always able to secure their ideal date, and dealt with problems during planning that this year's board consistently prevented. This lifted burden allowed us to focus on things that previous boards didn't have the luxury of thinking about, such as how to best promote our events around campus, how to best give people directions to the event, and how to best match our social media outreach with the mission and goal of our events. Overall, this thorough officer training allowed us to focus more heavily on programming when it came to events and is a large reason why we not only had large attendance numbers at all of our events, but had numbers that continuously increased as the year passed and our reputation got more and more well known. Another reason for this increased freedom to plan programming stems from the fact that XULAVA's resources were almost endless this year, especially financially. This was largely because we directly involved sponsors in most of our events and always gave them direct updates as to what their funds were going to. This made them very happy to always help us with funding and is a large reason why we never really worried about money. If anything, we were most limited by class schedules and limited number of available hands at times, both of which are problems that we consistently planned around and worked through during our weekly Board meetings. Many of our sponsors are still keeping up with us during this pandemic and have openly expressed how impressed they were with our events and how they can't wait to continue working with us soon. Many of them don't even call themselves sponsors anymore because they view us as partners who mutually help each other instead. This mutual relationship is something that our sponsors didn't receive from previous boards and is a large reason why the amount of funding and support we received from them this year was much more immediate and generous after they experienced what we were truly capable of.
How did the organization work together to maximize strengths and overcome weaknesses?
One of XULAVA's ongoing problems according to past and current members is not being as well known on Xavier's campus and catering to other VSA's instead of Xavier students right on campus. That completely changed this year because this year's officers made it their mission to make XULAVA more well known on campus, have a more prominent role on campus among students, and increase the involvement of non-Vietnamese Xavier students in all aspects of XULAVA. All of these goals were achieved, and proof can be found in how many non-Vietnamese Xavier students attended this year's XULAVA events. At Game Night, we had 28 non-Vietnamese Xavier students in attendance. At Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in September, over half of the attendees were non-Vietnamese with 42 and five of them even served as volunteers. Finally, our Tet Night in January had 57 non-Vietnamese Xavier students attend with every single class council having at least 3 of their executive board members there as well. Our Tet Night gained so much popularity on campus with its great success that we were even featured on the front page of Xavier's website, and we had so many of our classmates personally reach out to us to learn more about XULAVA after seeing our feature on the website. All of these numbers far surpassed what any XULAVA board member had expected when we set this goal and is a large testament to how hard this year's board worked to rewrite and redefine XULAVA's reputation on Xavier's campus. The reason for this huge boost in attendance and involvement is because we leaned into one of our major strengths: making personalized connections. XULAVA has always been able to use this strategy with sponsors, but have usually failed in doing so with non-Vietnamese potential members because the outreach was often passive. This year, we made our outreach very active as described above, and our fellow Xavierites who aren't Vietnamese couldn't stop telling us how much they appreciated these initiatives. People always say "VSA is for everyone", but we wanted to truly prove and exhibit this. We went out of our way to make sure that every single non-Vietnamese member was personally attended to at our events because we know how easy it is to feel marginalized as a minority due to our status as Vietnamese students at an HBCU. While doing so, we also made sure not to neglect our Vietnamese attendees because we truly wanted to personify the belief that VSA really is for everyone with absolutely no prerequisites or qualifications. By showing our fellow Xavierites how genuine our desire was to connect with them and share our culture with them, we made connections that we never would have been able to create without this effort and ultimately turn one of our weaknesses into our greatest strengths. It's common knowledge that Xavier's Asian population is relatively low compared to our fellow VSA's around the region, and many view this as a weakness. We viewed this as a strength that we should capitalize on because the best way to spread our Vietnamese culture and fulfill our major pillar of Culture is by spreading it to those most unfamiliar with Asian Culture in general. Instead of viewing Xavier as having a low Vietnamese population, we viewed Xavier as having a large population of non-Vietnamese students who will benefit most from learning about the Vietnamese culture. This put us in a unique position to most effectively execute VSA's core mission of spreading the Vietnamese culture to those who have very little knowledge of Vietnamese culture as well as Asian culture in general and is why we made an active effort to increase awareness of XULAVA on campus and actively show how beneficial XULAVA can be to our classmates who aren't Vietnamese.
Provide specific examples of how the student group demonstrated growth and development in the 2018-2019 academic year.
Every single one of our major events had incredibly high numbers of non-Vietnamese attendees in comparison to past years. We enhanced our methods of sharing our culture with others by offering Vietnamese food that isn't as "mainstream" but still great, such as banh beo and banh bo. This was a welcome site by many of our members who grew tired of the typical eggrolls and noodles offered at most VSA events. We utilized technology like never before both in marketing our events on campus and as a way to constantly keep in touch with our members. This switch to Discord has been incredible in keeping our XULAVA members sane during this quarantine. We tell our members that joining XULAVA is like gaining an entirely new family, and this quarantine has provided solid proof as to how serious we are when we say this. Past complaints about this motto revolved around the assumption that "only the XULAVA Eboard is family". We hated hearing this and is why we have continued to keep up with our members throughout the entire year over Discord by giving them people to vent to late at night, play games with when they're feeling lonely, and a place to send personalized memes over to show that we view every single member of XULAVA as part of our family, and that a pandemic isn't capable of tearing that apart. The Professionalism Pillar wasn't taken seriously last year, and we made it our mission to change this by providing our members with serious connections, such as help with which research labs and internships to apply to, and literally creating jobs through our connection with the U.S. Census Bureau. Eight people signed up to be census takers when they met with Census representatives at Tet Night, and then 22 more people took advantage of this opportunity after we used our connections with other Xavier student organizations to spread the word and reach out to those who would benefit most from being offered such a job. All of this was in addition to our P2P and showed that our dedication to professionalism wasn't transient and is always something that we work to provide our members with. We made our presence on XULAVA's campus known and unforgettable by consistently attending other student organizations' events and having a direct voice in what we wanted from our administration by meeting with people such as the Dean of Academic Affairs and both the President and Vice President of Xavier multiple times throughout the year. This desire to enact change and provide our members with a voice on campus that they have been desperately wanting for so long extended to our role in deciding the incoming SGA executive board, and the current SGA president credits much of his success to the fact that he earned our respect and support. This was a very far cry to previous years where XULAVA had a very quiet presence on campus and an ambivalent, sometimes antagonistic, relationship with both SGA and Xavier administration. A common theme this year was to reinvent ourselves, and a crucial component of this was taking on larger projects than ever before and successfully completing them. Whether it was working with VAYLA to create the TN Fellowship to send two fellows back to Vietnam without the worry of finances or working with Xavier's Center of International and Intercultural Programs to attract more international students or provide current international students with a more comfortable college experience, the projects XULAVA took on this year and successfully completed were of a magnitude much larger than any that came before it in previous years and drove home the point that XULAVA and VSA in general is truly so much more than "just a club".