Hai Ba Trung School of Organizing - Northeast Fundraiser 2014

What this is!The Hai Bà Trưng School of Organizing is a training program for young self-identified progressive Vietnamese organizers. Participants have the opportunity to explore a progressive Vietnamese American identity, learn the basics of organizing theory and skills, and connect to local and national organizers doing social justice work. The training will focus on best practices and challenges unique to organizing in the Vietnamese American community in the Northeast region. Named after two celebrated women warriors who led one of the Viet peoples’ first major revolts against colonialism, the Hai Bà Trưng School’s goal is to develop a base of progressive Vietnamese American organizers and activists. This training originated in summer of 2011 in Southern California and since then HBT has completed trainings for three cohorts and expanded into Northern California and the Northeast US region. This year we hope to dive deeper into community issues, challenges, and opportunities unique to the Viet community in the Northeast region, and a day of hands-on fieldwork.

Who we are!We are a volunteer grassroots group and we need your financial support to make this training accessible to low-income folks and for those traveling from afar. Your support will also help feed and transport participants for the training. If you believe in our mission and the purpose of our training, lend us a hand! We are launching a Booster campaign where you can purchase a t-shirt to support our training. Please support our cause by purchasing a t-shirt and spreading the word to all your friends and communities! We need at least 20 t-shirts sold to continue the campaign -- be part of the first 20 to help keep us going! Our goal is to sell 150 t-shirts by April 15.

On the T-Shirt!The text on the back of the t-shirt is a traditional Vietnamese folk poem that inspired community members to create a banner protesting the exclusion of the Vietnamese LGBTQ community from the annual 2013 Lunar New Year parade in Orange County, California. The t-shirt design is inspired by one protestbanner’s illustration which was re-designed by one of our team members. We saw the connection between the poem’s purpose with the on-going “Toi Dong Y” movement for LGBTQ equality in Viet Nam, and so we included the slogan as a shout out. If you need more information regarding our training or our fundraising campaign please send us an email at hbt.northeast@gmail.com.