National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA)

In 1995 a group of community-based Vietnamese service agencies, located in geographic areas with large concentrations of Vietnamese, formalized a network relationship that had already existed informally for many years by creating NAVASA. Since its inception, NAVASA membership has grown steadily and currently stands at 31 members. NAVASA has enabled local service providers to strengthen their activities by bringing together key community and local ethnic leadership to work on vital issues affecting self-support, cultural adjustment, and community strengthening of refugees. Also, NAVASA is able to provide leadership training, ethnic community development, public education, information dissemination on ethnic-specific issues, resource development, and the convening of national and regional meetings around issues of community concern to its members. As separate agencies, NAVASA members regularly provide language training, employment services, job training, orientation and cultural adjustment for newcomers, and hundreds of related activities that enable Vietnamese to attain success in the U.S.