Friends of Little Saigon

Community engagement: bi-lingual (english and vietnamese) engagement empowering Little Saigon stakeholders, including residents, business owners, and other community members, to advocate for the community they want to see. This includes the Little Saigon landmark project (mixed-use development project); ensuring that neighborhood developments and construction benefit the community; bridging connections between community stakeholders and government agencies; and advocating for policies and plans to advance community goals. Over the course of the year, we engaged about 200 stakeholders.

Arts & culture: preserving vietnamese culture through arts, language education, and special events. This includes operating our cultural space; seasonal festivals and events; rotating art exhibit; 10-week vietnamese language course; small business and artist pop-ups; and public art projects. Many of these are offered at our cultural space, and we estimate 48,000 visitors in our space per year.

Small business support: working with and supporting small business through capacity building, in-language information, and events. This includes providing free bi-lingual techincal assistance; referrals; access to resources for new and existing businesses; small business incubation for budding entrepreneurs and small businesses to test out their concepts and products through pop-ups and retail space at our cultural space. We do consistent outreach to nearly 80 businesses and provide direct assistance to nearly 20.