Grantees
and Partners

Mekong NYC

Overview

Mekong NYC is a social justice organization that brings dignity and value to the lives of Southeast Asians in the Bronx and throughout New York City. We do this through community organizing and movement-building, centering healing through arts and culture, and creating a strong safety net rooted in community power.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, Southeast Asian refugees are at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with trauma experienced before and after immigration to the U.S. One study found that 70% of Southeast Asians receiving mental health care were diagnosed with PTSD. The impact of the Cambodian genocide and Vietnam war and the trauma from those events is intergenerational.

Approximately 90% of artists, musicians, actors, dancers and intellectuals were killed by the Khmer Rouge regime because Pol Pot’s communist regime envisioned a new Cambodia that “must be freed from all outside influence and any remnant of what they considered decadent culture.” (Traces Of Trauma: Cambodian Visual Culture and National Identity In The Aftermath Of Genocide, Boreth Ly) As a consequence, cultural traditions were virtually extinguished, and contemporary culture was halted. In refugee communities, sustaining language and traditions that were vital to the community’s identity – and passing them down to younger generations – became an imperative.

Grant

Purpose: To support arts programs that are part of Mekong NYC’s approach to community resilience, healing and activism.

The Illumination Fund provides general operating support for arts-based programs, including:

• Summer Intergenerational Program and its collaborative art projects, where art allows for different kinds of communication between youth and adults, giving them another way to express feelings, share experiences, and explore ideas. Art forms vary year to year, and have included photography, mural painting, podcasts, and mask-making.
• Collaboration with Cambodian Living Arts, a Cambodia-based organization, by hosting artists in the US and cultivating relationships between Cambodian Living Arts and individuals who were deported from the US to Cambodia as part of the U.S. government’s immigration and refugee policy.
• Collaboration with Urban Khmer Ballet, an LGBTQIA+ dance troupe, that creates art that ignites critical conversations on traditions, post-colonialism, neo-classical dance, and its evolution. Producing both traditional and groundbreaking contemporary productions includes new techniques, movements, and music, pulling inspiration from past literature and dancers. By reimagining classical dances, UKB produces one-of-a-kind performance art that aims to inspire the next generation of artists, and more importantly, unveil the generational complexities of traditional and conservative art.
• Collaboration with Watt Samaki Dance Troupe that consists of youth who have learned how to do traditional Cambodian dances that originated from the Angkor era. The dances are deeply rooted in Cambodian culture and traditions.
• Coordination of significant cultural events, like Tet (Lunar New Year), Cambodian New Year, and Tet Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Moon Festival).
• Dance and music classes with youth and adults to share and sustain cultural traditions that build community cohesion and pride.

Impact

Mekong NYC ran six, ten-week-long đàn tranh (Vietnamese zither) lessons via Zoom and in-person, teaching beginner to advanced courses across folk songs, tuning, and notation. In partnership with Southeast Asian Defense Project, Mekong NYC advanced its Storytelling Project with staff and youth fellows participating in three, train-the-trainer workshops and four, one-on-one interviews with Cambodian and Vietnamese community members. The audio transcripts are being prepared for a published anthology.

 

Additional Resources

Mekong NYC: Culture and Community-Building