Introduction:
The Calgary Vietnamese Women’s Association’s Anti-Racism Project was a result of three and a half months of collaboration, partnership, and teamwork with Act2EndRacism and the ACCT foundation. This project was born as a direct response to the rise in Anti-Asian racism caused by the outbreak of the novel COVID-19 pandemic. The scope of this project was to educate, encourage and empower the Vietnamese community in Calgary and the surrounding area, with a special focus on essential and service industry workers such as nail salon technicians, restaurant staff, etc. Throughout this project, we have aimed to create and compile resources for the Vietnamese community to access when facing racism in their everyday lives. Please find below a breakdown of the project’s overall activities and accomplishments.
Project Duration: December 2020 to April 2021
Project Staff: Susie Ngo, Quynh Vo, Krystal Nguyen
Volunteers: Sony Tran
Funder: Act2EndRacism
Project Activities and Achievements:
- Collected 54 responses for the Racism Awareness Survey and Racism Incident Report form
- Organized 4 Workshops and 4 Activities with a total of 161 attendees
- Organized one social media campaign with a reach of 8,000 to 10,000 people
- Compiled a Story Book Collection
Deliverables:
Workshops:
Total Reach: 161 attendees
From January 1st to April 15th, we hosted a total of eight workshops and activities.
Workshop 1: Racism – What’s New? – Feb 8th
Valentine’s Day Activity for Essential Workers – Feb 15th
Workshop 2: How to Report Racism – Feb 24th
Employment Rights Webinar Focus Group – March 4th
Anti-Racism Art Class: Mask Decorating – March 12th
Workshop 3: Employment Rights Webinar with Act2EndRacism – March 18th
Anti-Racism Art Class: Polymer Clay – March 29th
Workshop 4: Self-Defense Workshop – April 12th
Social Media Campaign:
Estimated total reach: 8,000 – 10,000
Our social media campaign was focused on raising awareness in our own community about racism. We produced a variety of different infographics, booklets, and posters in both English and Vietnamese to promote public understanding of racism and its relation to COVID-19. We also commissioned a talented young Asian artist, Gracelynn Wan, to animate four videos for us. Three of the videos were animated real-life accounts of instances of racism and harassment faced by members of our community, and one was about COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism. We promoted and are continuing to promote these posters and infographics on our social media platforms, namely our Facebook page, emailing our members, and on our website. We also posted them in popular Facebook forums for Vietnamese community members such as the International Students’ Page, etc. Please find here some examples of our infographics.
Storybook Collection:
In addition to our social media campaign and workshops, one of our goals was to collect and record real-life instances of everyday racism faced by members of our own community. We felt that such a resource would be an important testament to memorialize the struggles that our people are still facing to this day, and to mark that progress still needs to be made. These voices and stories deserve to be heard and will help to raise awareness for the continuing fight against Anti-Asian racism. The book is bilingual, in both English and Vietnamese, and we hired a contractor to design it for us. Using our budget, we have ordered 100 copies of this book to be printed. All participants will be given a copy of the book, and it will also be distributed as a free resource to other ethnic and cultural communities in the city as a way to share with them our experiences. Perhaps they will empathize with us, and perhaps they have faced similar situations. This book will be a powerful tool to start a conversation on Anti-Asian racism in the community. We will also have a PDF version available on our website.
Please see the book here.