Leadership:

VCSA places a very strong emphasis on internal and external leadership development throughout many activities and programs that the organization delivered all year round. For internal leadership development, VCSA always encourages younger members to take on important roles to lead different projects to help them build the confidence and to develop their leadership ability. VCSA applies the same principle of encouraging the young people to get involved in the leadership roles in all other projects we organized—one of the reason why our organization has grown significantly and become very well known within the Vietnamese-American community across Texas and across the nation.For Executive Board and Subcommittees of the organization, we always have a vice-chair or an assistant work with the chair or the project coordinator to "learn the ropes" and to prepare to take on the leadership role in the next term.

For external leadership development, VCSA delivers an annual youth leadership development camp called "Len Duong" (meaning "Embark on a new journey"). It has been available to all young community activists from across the nation annually since 1998. Every year, about 300 students and/or young community activists have sharpened their community skills and realized their potential as future leaders. They return each year more motivated, more equipped for and committed to community involvement. Based on the feedback we have received from campers from across the country in the last four years, and from tracking actual community involvement of each camper, the impact of these camps has been one of the biggest success stories in the Vietnamese-American community in the area for leadership development.

Per our mission statement, VCSA places an emphasis on developing youth because youth is a primordial factor in achieving our mission of building a strong Vietnamese-American community. In order for the youth to be able to take on leadership roles in their community activities, VCSA main focus since its inception is to build leadership skills and transfer of management knowledge to its young members.

  Leadership development strategies of VCSA

• 1. Develop young and diverse members
• 2. Assign important task and responsibility to young members and provide them necessary support to enable them to complete their tasks.
• 3. Having principles of leadership development central to the way VCSA functions as stated in the mission statement.
• 4. Networking to build leadership