AAPIP Blog

- written by Joe Lucero

We are pleased to welcome Tony Luong as the new US Program Manager of the VIET Fellows Program. He joins AAPIP directly from Vietnam where he was an in-country representative and teacher with Volunteers In Asia. Tony comes to AAPIP with extensive experience working in the Vietnamese American community and in Vietnam.

[Click here to see Tony's welcome video or press play below.]

For the past two years, Tony has been based in Hanoi with Volunteers In Asia. Prior to that, he was a Ford Foundation Fellow volunteering at Da Lat Center for Blind Children. Originally from San Jose, California, Tony has also been Editor-in-Chief of the Yellow Journal, published by the Department of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, and was an Editor for the Vietnamese Artist Collective, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and which published As Is, A Collection of Literal and Visual Works from Vietnamese Artists.

Tony’s experience in Vietnam and working with the Vietnamese American community provides him with unique insight into the Vietnamese diaspora. At this time he sees an opportunity to develop the leadership of younger Vietnamese Americans by ‘diving-in’ to their own histories through the VIET Fellows program.

Tony follows outgoing Program Director, Kelvin Vuong, in the development of the VIET Fellows program. Kelvin has recently been selected from a competitive pool of over two hundred candidates to be one of only eleven San Francisco City Hall Fellows, beginning in August of this year. We congratulate Kelvin, and recognize his many contributions to AAPIP and the VIET Fellows Program.

What is VIET Fellows?

Aligning Domestic and International Grantmaking & Investing in Young Vietnamese American Leaders.

In addition to building greater access to philanthropic capital for communities, AAPIP is equally committed to providing the field and the Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) community with the fullest possible context in which immigrant and refugee communities emerge and thrive. AAPI communities have been and remain immigrant and refugee communities first. Yet organized philanthropy will often invest in Asian communities across the globe, without understanding how those initiatives affect Asian American communities across the U.S.

AAPIP’s Vietnam Involvement and Engagement Tour Fellows Program, or VIET Fellows, models the kind of informed alignment between foundations’ stated objectives and their grantmaking strategies, increasing the effectiveness and impact of their work in Asian American communities in the U.S. and in Asian communities abroad.

The VIET Fellows program is a multifaceted, in-country fellowship to Vietnam that invests in the leadership of young Vietnamese Americans, to improve the quality of life of communities in the US and in Vietnam. It is an illustration of how to engage Vietnamese Americans in civic participation and activate their drive to give back to the community, in the US and in their home country.

The program illustrates the type of strategic alignment that can enhance the outcome and effectiveness of organized philanthropy’s work among diaspora communities, while simultaneously recognizing the inherent assets of those communities.

To find out more about the VIET Fellows Program, or to see and hear first-hand accounts from the most recent cohort of VIET Fellows, click here or visit www.VIETFellows.org.

- written by Joe Lucero

On the Air: Outgoing VIET Fellows Director, Kelvin Vuong, on KALW City Visions Radio

On April 25, Kelvin Vuong, outgoing VIET Fellows Program Director, appeared on City Visions Radio as part of a program focused on the enduring legacy of Agent Orange/Dioxin contamination in Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and its lasting effect in Vietnamese American communities. Kelvin’s remarks focused in part on how the VIET Fellows program brings new generations of Vietnamese Americans into leadership and into a conversation about how to treat these issues.

Produced by Yumi Wilson, Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University, and hosted by Joseph Pace, the program, The Legacy of Agent Orange: What the Bay Area Can Do to Help, included Charles Bailey, whose work with The Ford Foundation in Vietnam has laid the foundation for much of the national and international progress being made on these issues.  The panel also included De Tran, publisher and editor of VTimes, a Vietnamese-language newspaper based in Silicon Valley, and formerly a staff writer with the San Jose Mercury News and the Los Angeles Times.

To hear the full broadcast, click here or visit the audio archives at www.cityvisionsradio.com.
For more about VIET Fellows, visit www.vietfellows.org.