The Hmong Institute: In Service to Community (Part 2 of 2)
Mai Zong Vue and her husband Peng Her founded The Hmong Institute to meet the holistic needs of the Hmong community.
by Jonathan Gramling
Mai Zong Vue and her husband Peng Her have been visible providing services to and representing the Hmong community since at least the 1990s. Whether it is emceeing the Hmong New Year, working with Hmong dance troupes or giving guidance to mainstream agencies, they have been there to uplift the Hmong community and its culture.
At first, they used fiscal agents to handle the funds they raised to provide services. But in 2018, they decided to take their efforts to the next level and founded The Hmong Institute, which provides a range of services for Southeast Asians of all generations.
One of their foundational programs is the adult day care for the elders, which has a mental health component funded by Dane County CCS..
“We have a daytime program where we provide a holistic wrap-around services for the NewBridge Program, which is for people 50-years-old and older,” Vue said. “The daytime program has a combination of case management, a weekly activity where everyday there is an activity happening like bingo, sewing, computer class, exercise, health education and monthly field trips so that the elders can go out and learn about the new community that they live in. We provide health education on how to read your medications in collaboration with pharmacy students from UW-Madison. We have UW-Extension staff coming in to talk about the needs of diabetics. How do you maintain good health?
“We also provide a home-cooked meal as a part of the Wisconsin Senior Food Program. All of the elders who come have a nutritious meal on a daily basis when they come. We have bilingual-bicultural staff on site. The elders are very much at peace when they come. They don’t have to worry about being understood or not.”
Another component of their services is training professionals from mainstream agencies on Hmong culture so that they can provide culturally-relevant services.
“We also do a lot of culture training,” Vue said. “The trainings are on general Hmong culture as well as mental health in the Hmong community. Our series of Mental Health in the Hmong Community has been provided for the past three years. And we are now going to spread it out every other year. This training is tailored towards mental health providers or anyone interested in learning about Hmong mental health, healings and concepts.”
Vue gave an example of Hmong cultural beliefs that may impact how agencies provide services to the Hmong community.
“We don’t associate our feelings with a heart,” Vue said. “We associate it with the liver. When you say, ‘I love you with all my heart,’ in Hmong, it would be, ‘I love you with all my liver’ in English. Or when we treat someone with trauma, we also treat them spiritually, not just the physical. And so there are a lot of differences in health concepts in the Hmong community when we talk about health and mental health.”
Another foundational program is their Hmong cultural enrichment summer program, which is for five intense weeks in the summer, for Hmong students 6-13-years-old. As Hmong youth deal with the issue of identity, the summer program provides the youth with information about their heritage so that they don’t lose their Hmong heritage as they try to be “American.”
“Our effort is trying to give them that exposure to the Hmong culture, the respect for elders, the language, teaching them how to learn language so that they can hear the tone so they can show some pride to their grandparents or to their parents,” Vue said.
The summer program also provides academic support, especially to those youth who have received care at home instead of a pre-K setting.
“Many of them don’t have help with academics because whether it is their parents who are working and have no time to tend to them or they have a late start because they were babysat by their grandparents and there is no operation for them to go to pre-K,” Vue observed. “For example, a lot of our kids are staying with grandma and grandpa. And their safety is not in question. But developmentally, for education, they are not prepared. When people send their kids to pre-K, most of parents have already given their kids support by teaching them their colors, triangles and other skills. Many of our kids are behind because they don’t have that preparation.”
The Hmong Institute is also spearheading efforts to create community awareness of the significance of May 14 in the Hmong community.
“That day marks the genocide of the Hmong in Laos because of our affiliation and support of the United States during the Vietnam War,” Vue said. “May 14th is the day where the CIA airlifted our leaders, including General Vang Pao, out of Laos and left the Hmong behind. That was the beginning of our diaspora. Every year, for the past two years, we’ve been doing this Hmong Day at the State Capitol for Hmong youth so that they can understand the history and learn about state government so they can be exposed to who our policy makers are. What do they look like? They probably don’t get the chance to meet them. So this is a day where students from all over Wisconsin come together to meet their state legislators, the governor’s office and justices in the Supreme Court.”
The Hmong Institute works in a community that has experienced severe trauma and dislocation. It works to preserve the cultural past while preparing people for their future life in America in the tradition of maintaining community as the center of everyday life.
