Where to start? 1986? 2010? As the 2020 Census approaches, the community remains uncounted and therefore, unrepresented and underserved. While their numbers are small and geographic distribution narrow, their local impact is big.
Useful Lessons
What’s the problem?
We need to accurately determine the numbers of the Southeast Asian Montagnard refugee community in North Carolina. North Carolina is a gateway for new immigrants to the US, and an important location for resettlement of diverse refugee communities. Recent studies on food insecurity and hypertension support anecdotal evidence that the Montagnard community in North Carolina suffers from chronic disease, poverty, low graduation rates, and social, cultural, and linguistic isolation. Innovative research, education, pedagogy, and community-building approaches have framed promising interventions and propelled a partnership among community, academics, and advocates, and sustained capacity building work for over five years. However, larger and sustainable funding resources are needed to answer questions fundamental to both community and wider society. Specifically, the impact of interventions involving close community collaborations with identified community professionals, US-educated Montagnard youth, community women, and community elders cannot be measured until we determine Montagnard population numbers in North Carolina.
Who are the Montagnards?
The Montagnards are a unique community with multiple linguistic and tribal backgrounds, who originated from the highlands of Vietnam, and were resettled in the US as refugees after the Vietnam War. Although the Montagnard refugee community has lived in the Greensboro metropolitan region and North Carolina’s Central Piedmont for over thirty years, no authoritative source can give an accurate count of its population size. For a variety of reasons, they remain bureaucratically and systemically invisible. This is not a problem confronted by other states since the vast majority of Montagnards resettled in North Carolina.
Useful Lessons
What’s the problem?
We need to accurately determine the numbers of the Southeast Asian Montagnard refugee community in North Carolina. North Carolina is a gateway for new immigrants to the US, and an important location for resettlement of diverse refugee communities. Recent studies on food insecurity and hypertension support anecdotal evidence that the Montagnard community in North Carolina suffers from chronic disease, poverty, low graduation rates, and social, cultural, and linguistic isolation. Innovative research, education, pedagogy, and community-building approaches have framed promising interventions and propelled a partnership among community, academics, and advocates, and sustained capacity building work for over five years. However, larger and sustainable funding resources are needed to answer questions fundamental to both community and wider society. Specifically, the impact of interventions involving close community collaborations with identified community professionals, US-educated Montagnard youth, community women, and community elders cannot be measured until we determine Montagnard population numbers in North Carolina.
Who are the Montagnards?
The Montagnards are a unique community with multiple linguistic and tribal backgrounds, who originated from the highlands of Vietnam, and were resettled in the US as refugees after the Vietnam War. Although the Montagnard refugee community has lived in the Greensboro metropolitan region and North Carolina’s Central Piedmont for over thirty years, no authoritative source can give an accurate count of its population size. For a variety of reasons, they remain bureaucratically and systemically invisible. This is not a problem confronted by other states since the vast majority of Montagnards resettled in North Carolina.
Supplementary Slides
