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Cindy Ramos Parada

The SAMOSA Club and Outreach Vietnam Club hosted their first joint social on Wednesday, January 18.

“We were thinking about how to make the club popular, and we just thought about how the cultural aspects of Vietnam and India are somewhat similar,” SAMOSA officer Sindhya Selvarajan said. “And combining it would get more people to come and learn about both cultures.”

The collaboration between SAMOSA and Outreach Vietnam brought benefits to both organizations.

“I thought it would be really cool to not only just emphasize Vietnamese culture but also to uplift all the other cultures to show our appreciation to the diverse cultures in the school,” Outreach Vietnam president Philip Nguyen said. 

The joint social’s main goal was to educate students about Asian culture and traditions.

“I wanted people to learn more about both cultures and try out the food, learn about the customs,” Selvarajan said. 

Officers also wanted the students to have fun at the social along with learning.

“We also wanted to have culturally relevant games, so we decided to have a game activity with the red envelopes,” Nguyen said. “Inside were dragon bar cards, and it was just a fun rock-paper-scissors activity, but it also showed some aspect of Vietnamese culture.”

Both clubs dressed up for the occasion with cultural clothing.

“We wanted to raise more importance of all the different cultures that are in our campus, especially since we’ve never had a social this large before,” Nguyen said. “So we wanted to just go all out and everyone to wear their cultural clothing to represent who they are and their identities outside of school.”

The joint social is the first of many that the clubs hopes to organize.

“We’re doing another one [joint social] with Tea Club, and I think if we combine with a lot of other clubs, we can get more popularity and learn about other clubs and things that go along with them,” Selvarajan said.