Vietnamese students in US collect donations for flood victims at home

The Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) in Florida Atlantic University (FAU), the US is collecting donations to support people who have been affected by the flood crisis occurred in the central region of Vietnam in October.

T-shirt sales for donations. Photo: VSA

Collecting donations together with selling t-shirts is among activities the association has done, amounting to more than five million, the VSA said on Instagram.

Tammy Truong, the president of VSA, said the reasons behind starting the donations involved them seeing how much the flooding has affected the Vietnamese, according to the University Press.

“At least 178,000 homes have been submerged and over 5 million people have been affected,” according to their post. “Any donation and 10% of t-shirt sales sent to our Venmo will be shipped to the Pacific Links Foundation.”

“Just seeing how much it’s affected everyone kind of got me thinking, as a new organization, we’re planning on selling our t-shirts,” Truong said. “So we might as well put a majority of the proceeds towards going to Vietnam with the floods because, especially with my family, we’ve worked on our own personal donations and stuff to families in Vietnam before.”

“A lot of our international students at FAU are from Vietnam and due to Covid, they can’t go home and they’re seeing all this crisis happening as it’s kind of hard for them to go home and help their families,” Truong states. “This is another way for them to be able to donate and also feel like they’re making an impact in helping their family and the communities they’re from.”

According to Truong, there is no hard deadline, as she believes people can continue to donate and order t-shirts until then.

VSA events coordinator Andrew Mei explained that this was to help others and to show their friends, family, and followers about things that the media might not be covering; because either it is not big news or it is not related to the stories that they are covering.

Mei states that he has family in Vietnam and is glad to know they are all right, but knows that the flood crisis is “one of the worst flooding they have experienced in decades.”

The VSA is a cultural based organization at a number of universities in Florida. They strive to bring or introduce the Vietnamese culture onto campus as well as the surrounding community. VSA works closely with the Vietnamese community and other cultural organizations to promote cultural diversity and awareness.