Know your roots.Reach your best.Serve your community.

To inspire young Vietnamese to reach their personal best, live with balance in body, mind, spirit, and community, and carry their heritage forward in service to others.

Join VYF About us

A young woman in a white áo dài with a yellow and red sash waves from a parade float — Tết parade, Little Saigon, 2004

A circle of young Vietnamese students sitting on the grass in a park at dusk, talking, with a guitar leaning against a tree

Since 1994

Founded in 1994 by Vietnamese students who saw their community putting down roots while its young people drifted from the traditions that brought their families here. That is still the work.

The students who formed the Foundation, meeting in the park

What we do

Five commitments

Young men in white shirts and ties singing side by side, holding sheet music — Choir rehearsal, from the Foundation’s archive

Develop the whole person through balance in body, mind, spirit, and community.
Bring young Vietnamese together to learn from each other's experiences rather than in isolation.
Keep Vietnamese culture, language, and tradition alive in a generation raised abroad.
Bridge generations, helping young people and their parents understand each other.
Give young Vietnamese real responsibility in their communities. They lead, not simply assist.

About

We exist for young Vietnamese.

Vietnamese Youth Foundation is a youth development organization established in 1994 and recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Our work is to help them become capable people who know where they came from.

We keep Vietnamese culture, language, and tradition alive for a generation raised outside Vietnam. We also work between generations, helping young people and their parents understand each other.

Four young Vietnamese students sitting outdoors on a stone ledge, smiling at a laptop together, with coffee cups and notebooks

A Vietnamese family at a kitchen table: a grandmother and grandfather on one side, a young man and young woman on the other, mid-conversation, family photographs on the wall behind them — At the dinner table

Bridging Generations

Some of the hardest conflicts a young person faces are at their own dinner table.

Parents who crossed an ocean and rebuilt their lives. Children growing up in a world their parents never had to navigate. Both sides want the same thing and neither can say it in a language the other receives. The parent hears disrespect. The child hears control. What is actually there, in most cases, is love with no shared vocabulary.

We do not take sides in that room. We teach both directions. Young people learn what their parents carried, what was lost along the way, and why certain things are not negotiable for someone who has already lost enough. Parents learn what their children are navigating, and that a different life is not a rejected one.

Understanding your parents is not a betrayal of yourself. It is the beginning of knowing where your own strength came from.

Activities

Built by doing.

Character is not built in a classroom. It is built by doing: showing up, committing to something difficult, working alongside others, and being counted on.

A circle of young people stacking their hands together, seen from below against the trees

Young volunteers in white shirts packing donation boxes — Service

Volunteers standing in front of stacked boxes of donated food — Service

Foundation members posing together outside a building: young women in white, blue, red and gold áo dài in front, young men in white shirts and yellow ties behind — Culture and community

Culture and community

Cultural performances, community events, and parades that keep Vietnamese tradition alive in a generation raised abroad.

Service

Blood drives and food distribution, organized and staffed by our members. Young people lead these efforts, not just help with them.

Get involved

Every young person has something to contribute. Most are still waiting to be asked.

Ask.

Join VYF Volunteer Contact Us

Ask.

Tell us whether you want to join, volunteer, or have a question. Your message goes to info@vnyouth.com.