USLAA Cultural Patrimony
Conservation of culture including art and local wisdom is one of the main missions of our organization. We operate in promoting and capturing values to create pride in Lao culture and identity, as well as create awareness of morality to the community as well. Our organization encourages and supports all cultures to develop, preserve and pass on the activities that we as an organization help operate with communities and outside agencies.
2022-2023 Cultural Heritage and Community Identity Grants - Winter 2021
Conservation and promotion of arts , traditional, culture and local wisdom that are necessary to be preserved, inherited, restored and promoted. In order for the local people to love and cherish the arts and culture that are spiritually valuable that has been assimilated into the way of life from the past to the present. In addition, In addition, there must be dissemination to foreigners to have the opportunity to see, appreciate and experience the arts, culture, traditions and good way of life in order to create appreciation and pride in arts, culture and traditions to stay with the community forever.
Criteria for Success Include:
(1) Demographics of participants - The number of Lao and Asian participants will determine how successful the project is.
(2) Enjoyable experiences in the artists, performers, and audiences.
(3) Ability to engage and recruit attendees to join or be part of the volunteer team for the following year.
(4) Recruiting members would be a good benchmark for how appealing our works are and how engaging they are to the audience.
(5) A balanced budget.
Evaluation Process:
(1) We will provide feedback on the success of the process in achieving our goals through a written and verbal survey.
(2) Take count of the number of people at the events, with a particular focus on counting the amount of Lao community members. Some outcomes that can be measured are the amount of times on any cultural group performs at a community event, surveys on how people would feel about our participation in their community.
Indicators of success in continuation of traditions and cultures:(1) Staff and students carry on the good traditions and culture of Lao and be able to instill morals and ethics in students and promote gratitude towards the elders.
(2) Students are developed learning standards based on moral and ethical frameworks and are able to apply doctrines to their lives.
(3) The preservation of arts, traditional and culture is integrated with teaching and learning through activities.
We completed the Project1, which is The Lao New Year or Water Festival event. It's a vibrant and invaluable festival that is part of the Lao heritage that represents generosity, family values, community, society and religion that allows the Lao people to practice traditions. The event was held on May 7th, 2022 at the Thai Twist Restaurant & Banquet Hall in Blaine, MN. Events include; Religious ceremony, Ba-Ci (Lao tradition ceremony), bathing of Buddha images, pouring scented water upon seniors to ask for their blessing, and traditional on stage performance from 7 Asian ethnic groups; such as the Lao, Thai, and Indians. We created a children's group fashion show where the children showcased their Lao costumes and cultural parade. More than 500 Lao and SE Asians with the age ranges from 2-86 years old attended the event. We achieved most of the goals we strived for based off of what others wanted to see included in the event. Based on the in person survey we conducted, about 50% of the people that attended the party was interviewed. 100% of the people who were interviewed said that they wanted and believed that the Lao New Year event should continue and keep reaching out. An improvement that made our event successful this year was that we had more community members and volunteers participate in our event. Leading our group to reach out to parts of the community that didn't know about this information before.
We have heard extensive requests from the Lao community that we need to host the Lao New Year event every year, to provide a platform for SE Asians to come together and celebrate our culture through art and expression as well as allow SE Asians to exchange thoughts and ideas on how to continue the preservation of SE Asian art, culture and heritage. To create a vibrant and warm space for us to showcase our talent and art, as well as creating increased understanding and improved community relations between diverse groups of people as we open this event to other ethnic groups outside of SE Asians.
Right now, we are in the midst of planning the Project2. The project that is in progress is called the Grassroots Innovation. Our group members are promoting this project at all sort of community events taking place. ; Our Goals:
(1) To preserve and expand the Lao culture, traditions, customs, arts, and literature.
(2) To enhance the Lao community by promoting Lao culture and traditional values, educating on traditional practices, and developing the young generation to become an emerging leader.
(3) To promote and exchange knowledge of Lao culture and traditions with other ethnic groups and others of different national origins.
We completed:
Project1, which is The Lao New Year 2022 or Water Festival event. It's a vibrant and invaluable festival that is part of the Lao heritage that represents generosity, family values, community, society, and religion that allows the Lao people to practice traditions.
Project2, which is the Grassroots Innovation: The important goals of this grass roots project are to introduce Lao Americans and others of foreign origin who have experience and who may not have had opportunities to experience traditional Lao culture. The workshop increased attendance member's understanding and preserved art and culture for future generations to carry on. The event started mid-June and end in December 2022. - 12 Rituals, refers to the 12-month tradition that is related to Buddhist principles. Beliefs and agricultural lifestyle that Lao people have practiced since ancient times. - 14 Practices, it is a social statute of the Lao people as a principle of treating each other for people of various statuses since ancient times. - Religious rituals and Beliefs: Teaching and training religious rituals and beliefs from birth until the end of life. - Making Ba-Ci: It will be used at the ceremony to invoke the "Kwan" (Lao word for spirit), which in specific terms is explained as an ancient belief in Laos that the human being is a union of 32 organs and that the "Kwan" watch over and protect each one of them. - Making Sandalwood flowers: The Sandalwood flowers are symbolically flowers made from wood of the sandalwood tree. It has been used in cremation ceremonies in Laos and Thailand for hundreds of years. Laying sandalwood flowers at a funeral it is the final mourning for the deceased, believed to send the souls of the deceased to a better world. It is also last thing a living person will do for the person that we love. - Costume: To learn the history of Textiles/Woven Design. Weaving is the arts and crafts with since ancient times is produced using canvas and yarn. - Reginal Food: There are training courses of cooking. The geography of each region in Laos greatly affects the diet of the local people. Most of the raw materials used for food preparation are naturally. - Traditional dances: There are very few Lao community service organizations working exclusively with the Lao people in Minnesota to teach Lao traditional dance. We have successfully and encouraged our community members children, youth, adults, and seniors to learn about our traditional dances.
Project evaluation monitoring: Monitoring and evaluation of the conservation and continuation of tradition projects to follow up to achieve the objectives set and the indicators of success of the project The follow-up and evaluation of the project are as follows:
1. Population and sample who has participated in the activity.
2. Research tools, it is an opinion evaluation form was created in accordance with the data collection process. It is an assessment that asks directly to the goal by dividing the content in the form Assessment is divided into 3 parts:
Part 1 General information of the respondents which's contains questions, gender, and occupation.
Part 2: Opinions and satisfaction that contains questions about project implementation.
Part 3 Additional Suggestions.
3. Data Collection, there were 306 respondents, representing 40% of the total population (750) who participated in the activity.
4. Data analysis, to determines the weight of the response scores of each option, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (5 highest and 1 is the lowest score) by have the respondents express their opinions.
Table#1 General information: From Table 1, it was found that most of the respondents were female, 214 people (69.93%), males 92 people (30.07 %). Occupation, 185 people are employ (60.46%), retired 46 people (15.03%) and 75 students (24.51%). All respondents are 306 people. Please see attached file "Table#1_General infoin additional document.
Table#2 Opinions and satisfaction: The data analysis consists of 1) Summarizing the number and percentage of respondents to the project assessment. 2) Summary of opinion level from mean analysis and standard deviation. Please see attached file "Table#2_Opinions .
Table#3 Level of success:
Note: to determine the criteria, we dividing scores into 5 levels, so (5-1)/5 = 0.8 per Level.
Level 5 (Highest) = 4.21-5.00
Level 4 = 3.41-4.20
Level 3 = 2.61- 3.40
Level 2 = 1.81 - 2.60
Level 1(Lowest) = 1.00-1.80
Please see attached file "Table#3_ Level of success .
it was found that the participants had an overall opinion towards our projects with an average of 4.32, in the highest level and our community members want to participate in this kind of activities next time. Please see attached file nameTable#3_ Level of success .
An improvement that made our goals successful this year was that we had more community members and volunteers participate in our projects. Leading our group to reach out to parts of the community that didn't know about this information before. We have heard extensive requests from the Lao community that we need to have these kinds of programs every year, to provide a platform for Lao to come together and celebrate our tradition, culture and to exchange thoughts and ideas on how to continue the preservation of Lao art, culture, and heritage. To create a vibrant and warm space for us to showcase our talent and as well as creating increased understanding and improved community relations between diverse groups of people as we open this event to other ethnic groups outside of SE Asians.
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Bounkong Souksavong, Vice Chair
Chongchith Saengsoudham, Board secretary
Bey Phothisane, Treasurer
Yothin Chanthavong, Public relation
Somsack Chettana, Board director
Banlang Phommasouvanh, Board assistance
Apichart Klaysingha, Executive Director