There have been a total of 25,000 members with 30 local associations through states in the US.
One of the core values of the Association of Vietnamese Students and Professionals in the United States is connection among young Vietnamese intellectual communities in the US.
Founded in June, 2013, the association has launched many practical activities for young Vietnamese students and workers living far away from homeland.
One of the association’s remarkable activities was VietChallenge, which is an annual startup competition since 2015 for Vietnamese entrepreneurs from all over the world.
After four times of organizing, the competition has built a start-up community and has become a bridge for innovative start-up projects of young Vietnamese from all over the world in the fields of technology, agriculture, green energy and health care.
The competition’s successes have created premises for start-up projects in the process of calling for investment capital as well as developing the relationship with prestigious investment funds, local and international investors.
In 2019, the competition had a new development step in term of quality with the attendance of teams, examining and consulting bodies. In the competition season of 2018-2019, the competition introduced “Startup Bootcamp” training program for the start-up teams qualifying in the final round. Within this program framework, the teams were trained with skills such as presentation, calling for investment and branding orientation.
The highlighted point of VietChallenge 2019 was the cooperation event with Viettel Telecommunications Corporation to launch Viettel Advanced Solution Track, attracting more than 200 ideas from ten different countries. Of which, Vietnam was the country contributing the most selected ideas/products with five projects in the fields of telecommunications, education, Internet of Things (IoT) and E-commerce including Graam, VVN, Appa, Vuihoc, MultiGlass.
VietChallenge has become one of the partners under the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Project 844 supporting national innovative startup ecosystems until 2025.
Sharing about the new projects of VietChallenge in the upcoming time, Head of the Association’s Public Relations Department Ms Le Tu My Lien said that it is expected to receive the support of Vietnamese start-up enterprises from all over the world not only in Vietnam, the United States and Canada but also from other countries.
Besides that, the organizing board will closely cooperate with the Association of Vietnamese Students and Professionals all over the world to promote and advertise VietChallenge to start-up communities in Europe, Oceania and other Asian nations with its desire of assisting more and more Vietnamese startups.
Additionally, VietChallenge is expected to cooperate with local large partners to kick off the First Annual Meeting for Vietnamese Start-ups with the participation of big investment funds in the world and excellent start-up projects from Vietnam.
In addition, the “Vong Tay Nuoc My” (VTNM) cultural program is also an annual event of the association organized in the big cities through the US such as Boston, San Francisco, Austin, Washington D.C., New York and Chicago.
The event is considered as not only a playground for the youth and students to show their talent in the US through sports and cultural exchange activities but also a place to exchange experiences and seek opportunities to develop career.
Along with the two programs above, the association has also held activities connecting Vietnamese communities such as Vietnamese Professional Network (VNPN), American Journey Competition, Vietnamese Tet in the US, VTNM’s Got Talent.
