Through Vietnamese Culture and Science Association, Dr. Anhlan Nguyen founded camp Lên Đường in 1998 (Youth Leadership Development Camp “Embark”) and it became an annual event attracting 250-300 campers in the age of 18-25 from across the United States and Canada. In the past 22 years, the camp has served more than 5000 young leaders to sharpen their leadership skills and cultivate their Vietnamese culture heritage awareness.
Through a short journey of 4 intensive days full of physical activities, workshops, seminars, action oriented projects, teamwork and deep conversations and deep connection, the campers learned to develop their cultural identity, leadership skills and friendship with others. The camp also helped the participants develop a strong sense of belonging to their communities, and a strong sense of Viet pride, where they are proud to be a Vietnamese American or Vietnamese Canadian. Each of them came out of the camp a stronger person, more confident, more engaged and above all, happier with the new found friendship from the camp that lasted a life time. The camp itself became a source of inspiration for Vietnamese youth from across North America to come together to learn from each other, to inspire each other to be more involved with the communities, especially the Viet communities in their local city and to serve others. Hundreds of testimonial stories and success stories have been shared by parents, campers, speakers and staff in the past 22 years.
Every year, there are usually 40-50 staffers who mostly were camp Len Duong alumni, came back and spent nearly a total of 6000 volunteering hours to design, implement and deliver the program for the camp. The camp has built a community of activists and leaders who are willing to serve and to give in order to develop the future generations of leaders for our communities. It was one of the most significant success stories of youth leadership development in the Vietnamese communities overseas.
Please visit www.lenduongcamp.org for media, more information about the camp, and past camp memories.
