Silicon Valley Vietnamese American Community Empowerment Symposium

2072 Lucretia Avenue,San Jose CA 95122

13 November, 2021

Description

VAR will be hosting the first-ever Silicon Valley Vietnamese American Community Empowerment Symposium to discuss equity issues at the VACC The Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR) will be hosting the first-ever Silicon Valley Vietnamese American Community Empowerment Symposium on Saturday, November 13th, 2021 from 10:00am to 3:30pm. The Symposium will be held at the Vietnamese American Community Center (VACC) at 2072 Lucretia Ave in San Jose, California. Since 2019, our refugee and immigrant communities have been disproportionately stricken by the onset and course of the COVID-19 pandemic. This disproportionate impact has also revealed a variety of underlying issues that community members have faced and continue to grapple with through recovery. For the Vietnamese American community in Santa Clara County, a population of over 120,000, which constitutes the second largest population of Vietnamese people in diaspora in the world, generational political and ideological divisions have been exacerbated by rampant proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. In the face of adversity, it is us who have been at the forefront of addressing issues of health and racial equity, political and historical representation, and intergenerational healing. The goal of this Symposium is to convene and foster space for community members, organizers, and organizations to continue to 1) recognize the issues impacting our families, 2) reflect upon and learn from our shared experiences, and 3) strategize ways to take action towards empowering ourselves and our communities. The Community Empowerment Symposium will feature three panel discussions on 1) the initial on-the-ground responses and ramifications of the pandemic, 2) the lessons learned from mobilizing community on systemic issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to anti-AAPI hate, and 3) how we envision the future and livelihood of Vietnamese America in Silicon Valley. Following the panel discussions will be facilitated breakout groups on to encourage the creation of art, actions to engage in activism, and avenues towards practicing advocacy. We hope that these initial conversations and presentations from the Symposium will lead to a more robust roadmap of how the Vietnamese American community will be equipped to collaborate cross-culturally address issues of inequity and injustice for the sake of our future generations. The mission of the Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR), founded in 2013, is to organize, advocate, and educate our community. We accomplish this mission through three core activities: mobilization, advocacy, and education – mobilization through intentional coalition building; advocacy through empowerment and strategy; and education through organizing community panels, workshops, and cultural events.