A one day conference on "Working with the Vietnamese Community" was held at the Holmesglen Conference Centre in July 2004. It was the first joint project of the Vietnamese Workers Action Network (VWAN) which consists of workers from various agencies in the Southern region and across Melbourne. Here are some highlights about the conference that participants took with them from the day.

The magnificent display about Vietnam created a warm and pleasant feeling when people first entered the conference centre. It was an invitation to everyone to walk together on a one day journey to know the history and culture of Vietnam, to gain some insight about the issues encountered by the Vietnamese community in Australia and to get some helpful strategies in delivering a more culturally sensitive service to Vietnamese clients.

The beautiful traditional music at the start captured people’s hearts. The smoothing and calming sound of the instruments invited people to the land of Vietnam, the land of four thousand years of civilisation going through numerous external and internal wars, yet with an identity, culture and language which remained unique.

The first keynote address emphasized the differences between Collectivism and Individualism and their impacts on people’s life, and the challenges to embrace diversity in the Australian society with more tolerance and justice. The second keynote address offered some insight about Vietnam- its demography, history, the migration patterns to Australia and the core values of the Vietnamese family. Not to forget to mention that the VWAN was launched with some delightful humour that received the full attention of the audience.

The afternoon was split into different workshops. I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop on "Working with the Vietnamese clients in gambling counselling" (which also discussed some strategies for cross-cultural counselling), and a second workshop on "Working with Interpreters".

Another highlight from the day was the Traditional costume parade performed by the volunteers and workers in the network which was very much welcomed by participants.

Being a member of the Conference working committee, I was very glad about the success of the conference- "the fruit" of the VWAN, of the collaboration between the agencies. All the hard work was well paid off and I look forward to working on future joint projects in serving the community.