Hi everyone! I’m Thu-Mai the current president of UH VSA and I hope everyone is having a wonderful start of the new year. Chúc Mừng Năm Mới and happy year of the Goat/Ram!!!
Every school has their “baby” whether it be a culture show, VSA pageant, a date auction, formals, leadership convention, sporting event, or anything else in the middle. For the University of Houston, we hosted our 6th annual Vietnamese Extravaganza charity date auction and talent show, or VEX, on Friday February 13th, 2015 to raise awareness and funds for the CPP: Food Aid Compassion. VEX had the honor of being awarded Outstanding Philanthropic Program at this past UNAVSA-11 conference in Dallas, TX. After coming from a record breaking year and such a heart-warming recognition, it was beautiful to see how this year the VSA members, officers, and community supporters came together to put on our best effort yet.
Inspired by this years CPP making waves of change and by how far we’ve come as a VSA, region, and family, our theme was Turning Tides: Breaking the Current because we believe that together we can turn the greatest of all Tides to a better world.
VEX 2015 had 10 organizations from UH participate by auctioning off a person and performing a solo or ensemble talent. In addition, we had a special guest spoken word performance by Kavi Vu and Antony Bui, a fashion show with cultural outfits and modern couture dresses, a lion dance performance featuring the first all girls lion dance team, an apparel pop-up shop, a silent auction of baskets and prizes, a photobooth, and a Project Aqua Wall so attendees could participate in the Project Aqua photo campaign, and a UVSA South Unity Tour to bond the out-of-town VSA’s. Essentially, everything that someone could participate in that night all went back to Food Aid Compassion in some way.
We call VEX not only a date auction but an extravaganza because it shows the community team effort to engage people around Vietnamese culture. From the UNAVSA secretary coming to speak about Food Aid Compassion, our specials guests flying from Atlanta and Canada, the UNAVSA External Vice-President providing his fashion line, our friends at Tony Thai providing the best chicken wings a VSA event has ever seen, the clothing line DKTC participating in donating proceeds, or the former president of UH VSA from 35 years ago coming back to be a sponsor and judge, VEX encapsulated the meaning of family. Only in the UNAVSA community would we have an event where so many supporters from different walks of life be so equally invested in the success of VEX.
The officers of UH VSA want VEX to be successful monetarily and in the long run. We created committees to delegate the executive tasks, held weekly meetings, demonstrated communication and problem-solving whenever a conflict arose, and even held a post debrief all in the effort to create capable leaders that will continue VEX into its legacy. We raised about $4000 for Food Aid Compassion, had over 400 attendees, helped facilitate the largest South Unity Tour yet. It’s hard to say thank you to all that contributed, but we hope that VEX gave everyone a feeling of inspiration, compassion, and community!
