After years of extensive conversations with board and staff, we’re excited to announce our rebrand from Vietnamese Youth Development Center to Southeast Asian Development Center. Our work remains the same, committed to eliminating social, economic and education inequalities affecting Southeast Asian Americans.
We want to provide you some background on the rationale for the name change and our new logo to better serve our community.
Why we rebranded. We want to better represent our Southeast Asian community. The organization was founded in 1977 to provide young Vietnamese refugees resettling in the Tenderloin with much needed practical services. Over time, the Vietnamese Youth Development Center came to serve primarily Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese youth. The name did not accurately represent the children, youth and families who came through the Center.
Our new mission. In keeping with our new name, we have updated our mission. Our new mission is “to foster a healthy, thriving and self-sufficient Southeast Asian American community” is succinct and captures the core essence of our organization’s work.
Our new logo. The circular logo focuses on the iconic idea of strength and community. The three arcs in the middle are inspired by the multiculturalism of Southeast Asia, specifically our history Cambodians, Lao and Vietnamese Americans impacted by resettlement and the aftermath of war. The mark also reflects the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, a landmark of our founding in the Bay Area. It is in this spirit we are building strong communities together through our new logo.
We are truly grateful to all of you, our community and donors, who have supported VYDC in the past 43 years. We hope that our rebrand is an exciting movement forward as we continue to grow as an organization.