(2018) A grant narrative for Montagnard Population Count Project (MPCP) written with community members.
Montagnard Population Count Project (MPCP). Without outside funding but with plenty of experience and committed allies, we started this project in Spring 2018. Through it we seek a definite count of our community members living across North Carolina, particularly in the six counties with the heaviest concentration. Estimates of our numbers vary; none reflect that we are multi-tribal, multi-lingual and multigenerational, that we marry within our community and outside it, that many elders have lived longer here in America than they did in Pleiku or Buon Ma Thout.
Through MPCP we see a flourishing of talents fueled by pride in our identity, history and new homeland. As one youth wrote, “The Montagnard girls at UNC had a meeting with Montagnard college students at UNCG and Guilford… an event to mobilize youth and have discussions on identity and culture…” With detailed information we can argue for veterans’ benefits for elders who today die without adequate healthcare.
For local and state offices and other agencies we can offer something they could never discover on their own, with big implications for policy outcomes, costs and benefits. Through MPCP we’ve brought to the table many parties used to looking at our community through the deficit lens, what we lacked, what we could not achieve, what we had to settle for.
Collaborative enterprise. To become visible, our community has not worked alone. Youth, our next-generation leaders, have trained with elders, social justice organizers, educators and advocates, business members and clerics inside and outside our community. Right now, working closely with university researchers, state officials and health professionals, we have already framed technical steps, tested survey instruments and engaged in door-to-door and church-based data collection. As community insiders, we have the language skills and cultural familiarity to know what will work and what won’t. With our allies we have overcome numerous cultural, linguistic, social and bureaucratic obstacles that have stopped past efforts.
Montagnard Dega Association (MDA) was created by the first refugees to arrive in 1986. Largely funded by the State’s Refugee Services office and located in Greensboro, its main task is meeting the needs of the community. In 2010, a small grant from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice revealed low understanding about the purpose of the census or its value to the community. In 2012 –2013, our medical doctors began work to standardize terms to interpret and translate common chronic diseases. With university researchers they became the Montagnard Health Disparities Research Network. Women in Greensboro’s Rosewood neighborhood asked for technical help to obtain a Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro grant to learn more about health literacy, English and acculturation skills in a classroom they started in a neighbor’s living room. Three trained community health workers formed Women’s Learning Group which went on to partner with Guilford College and UNCG as a service learning site managed by Montagnard college youth and a regular field site for the Montagnard Hypertension Research Project, a community and academic collaboration that trained dozens of high school, college and university youth about community organization, civic society and social engagement, advocacy and research. These initiatives culminated in the formation of a youth group, the Montagnard American Organization, which partnered with the 2015 National Folk Festival and has since helped revive MDA and bring community together.
Working with so many partners has also given us understanding about how to be good collaborators who can learn together.
MPCP is an essential step. Our project is the natural progression in our community’s decades-long journey towards full realization, empowerment and political and social engagement in North Carolina. MPCP methods and procedures are founded on community knowledge and traditional customs shared with outsiders, academic institutions, service organizations, government offices, nonprofits and others, but informed by proven community engagement and service learning models and premised on formal research techniques essential to the discovery, documentation and dissemination of valid data, our data, that will help us move forward.
With funding we can strategically leverage relationships and open doors that were closed to us. With funding we will be able to more broadly publicize our efforts and bring more stakeholders into our circle. Above all, funding ensures continuity, allows us to build capacity and hit goals within project timeframes.
Controlling Our Future. We Montagnards (also called Dega) are indigenous peoples from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. We fought alongside the US military during the Vietnam War and came to America as refugees after the war. We first arrived in 1986, and our people chose North Carolina ever since, making our state the largest Montagnard community outside Southeast Asia. Our numbers are not captured in any federal, state, or local level population counts or databases despite our many years here, unlike similar tribal peoples like the more numerous Hmong who also fought alongside American troops.
The broad category of Asian-Americans to which we belong includes many sub-groups with health and socio-economic disparities. Here in North Carolina we are subjected to “model minority” and other crippling stereotypes. Our average annual household incomes are not $100,000 like Indian-Americans or $70,000 like Chinese-Americans. We are ethnically and linguistically different from Vietnamese-Americans with whom we are regularly confused.
Without knowing our numbers, further appeals by our elders for services and support vital to our wellbeing and existence quickly come to a standstill. While others come to the table ready with detailed, evidence-based arguments, we cannot. We don’t know how many of youth graduate from high school or go on to college. We don’t know how many drop out. We don’t know how many of us have obtained citizenship. We don’t know how many elders suffer from chronic disease or live in poverty. We don’t own or control our future.
Montagnard Population Count Project (MPCP). Without outside funding but with plenty of experience and committed allies, we started this project in Spring 2018. Through it we seek a definite count of our community members living across North Carolina, particularly in the six counties with the heaviest concentration. Estimates of our numbers vary; none reflect that we are multi-tribal, multi-lingual and multigenerational, that we marry within our community and outside it, that many elders have lived longer here in America than they did in Pleiku or Buon Ma Thout.
Through MPCP we see a flourishing of talents fueled by pride in our identity, history and new homeland. As one youth wrote, “The Montagnard girls at UNC had a meeting with Montagnard college students at UNCG and Guilford… an event to mobilize youth and have discussions on identity and culture…” With detailed information we can argue for veterans’ benefits for elders who today die without adequate healthcare.
For local and state offices and other agencies we can offer something they could never discover on their own, with big implications for policy outcomes, costs and benefits. Through MPCP we’ve brought to the table many parties used to looking at our community through the deficit lens, what we lacked, what we could not achieve, what we had to settle for.
Collaborative enterprise. To become visible, our community has not worked alone. Youth, our next-generation leaders, have trained with elders, social justice organizers, educators and advocates, business members and clerics inside and outside our community. Right now, working closely with university researchers, state officials and health professionals, we have already framed technical steps, tested survey instruments and engaged in door-to-door and church-based data collection. As community insiders, we have the language skills and cultural familiarity to know what will work and what won’t. With our allies we have overcome numerous cultural, linguistic, social and bureaucratic obstacles that have stopped past efforts.
Montagnard Dega Association (MDA) was created by the first refugees to arrive in 1986. Largely funded by the State’s Refugee Services office and located in Greensboro, its main task is meeting the needs of the community. In 2010, a small grant from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice revealed low understanding about the purpose of the census or its value to the community. In 2012 –2013, our medical doctors began work to standardize terms to interpret and translate common chronic diseases. With university researchers they became the Montagnard Health Disparities Research Network. Women in Greensboro’s Rosewood neighborhood asked for technical help to obtain a Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro grant to learn more about health literacy, English and acculturation skills in a classroom they started in a neighbor’s living room. Three trained community health workers formed Women’s Learning Group which went on to partner with Guilford College and UNCG as a service learning site managed by Montagnard college youth and a regular field site for the Montagnard Hypertension Research Project, a community and academic collaboration that trained dozens of high school, college and university youth about community organization, civic society and social engagement, advocacy and research. These initiatives culminated in the formation of a youth group, the Montagnard American Organization, which partnered with the 2015 National Folk Festival and has since helped revive MDA and bring community together.
Working with so many partners has also given us understanding about how to be good collaborators who can learn together.
MPCP is an essential step. Our project is the natural progression in our community’s decades-long journey towards full realization, empowerment and political and social engagement in North Carolina. MPCP methods and procedures are founded on community knowledge and traditional customs shared with outsiders, academic institutions, service organizations, government offices, nonprofits and others, but informed by proven community engagement and service learning models and premised on formal research techniques essential to the discovery, documentation and dissemination of valid data, our data, that will help us move forward.
With funding we can strategically leverage relationships and open doors that were closed to us. With funding we will be able to more broadly publicize our efforts and bring more stakeholders into our circle. Above all, funding ensures continuity, allows us to build capacity and hit goals within project timeframes.
