Community leader reflects on post-Katrina efforts, encourages service

Students, staff and community members packed the Town Hall Room in the Leadership Studies Building on Thursday night to listen to Minh Nguyen, diversity speaker and community philanthropist, speak about post-Hurricane Katrina service efforts and his experiences with the Vietnamese-American community.

As a co-sponsored speaker from the department of women's studies, the department of american ethnics studies and the leadership studies department, Nguyen spoke on many different topic areas. One area of conversation was about his home life.

Nguyen spoke about how he grew up in New Orleans in his grandparents' home. He grew up in a low socioeconomic status family in a community that was predominantly African-American and Vietnamese-American. This area was right in the bay area of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast.

Nguyen went on to say that his community was one of the first to be reestablished. The city was trying to put a waste landfill that contained the debris from the clean-up initiative in this area of New Orleans, thinking that people wouldn't speak up or vote about it. Nguyen organized a huge movement for the people of his community to go out and register to vote, and they voted in large numbers, according to Nguyen.

"When I went to college at Loyola University, that was where I first learned about leadership," Nguyen said. "I was heavily involved in college. I was a community liaison for the university to the rest of the city. I had a lot of connections to people who had both stayed in New Orleans and who had left."

Nguyen took matters into his own hands to ensure that members of his community had a voice.

"I started VAYLA, Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans, to empower young people," Nguyen said. "Power lies in the people of the community who are making the decisions about it."

Nguyen is the executive director of VAYLA. The organization has many different programs revolving around a youth center that provides educational opportunities and tackles issues involving things like transportation, jobs and health concerns related to young people.

The organization also offers programs that are similar to a support group for young adults as well as programs to empower adolescent women to become leaders in their communities.

"I found it really interesting that when he spoke about his involvement with the community, he takes pride in other people and always had had the support of the community," said Sara Smith, freshman in family studies and human services.

Michele Janette, department head of women's studies and associate professor of English, said that she enjoyed the variety of programs that VAYLA had to offer.

"There are two parts of this lecture that I liked the most," Janette said. "One was how he used the most effective way of embodying his personal philosophy. He spoke about how communities can raise their own concerns and create their own solutions. The second was the young women's organization VAYLA has. It shows they are really pushing their organization to be more inclusive. They have a very broad range of programs."

Before the lecture, Nguyen got a tour of the Leadership Studies building and spoke in a few classes.

Kara Cavalli, freshman in elementary education, went on a personal tour of the building with Nguyen.

"He wanted to work really hard on gauging the lecture to the programs that were sponsoring him to be here," Cavalli said. "Overall, he was good about getting a feel for K-State and other experiences that he felt would be applicable to us."

Nguyen encouraged service learners to be conscious about the impact these people are making in the community members' lives. They ensure that people are not only providing the leadership skills and technical assistance to make their community better.

"Service learners are not effective if you aren't empowering the community you are serving," Nguyen said. "They need to challenge the community more. Whatever barriers the community has, these service learners need continue to have an impact on people."

Nguyen said that it was very inspiring to be in the Leadership Studies building. He said he was envious of Manhattan because the university has a Leadership Studies' program. He said students here are really driven to make an impact on the city and the communities they live in.

"I want to thank K-State for inviting folks from the Gulf Coast to events like this," Nguyen said. "It shows that there is still a lot of work to be done in the Gulf Coast. K-State has not forgotten about the disasters that have happened down there like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Irene and the BP oil spill. K-State hasn't forgotten about us."