Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association

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About Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association

We aim to build a strong, unified, and caring Vietnamese American community, where youths, adults, and elders are engaging and contributing citizens through continuing educational, social, and economic advancement while maintaining our cultural heritage.

The Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association (MVMA) is dedicated to advancing the Vietnamese American community in the Washington Metropolitan area through direct services, advocacy, and education. MVMA implements three cornerstones in its approach:

1. Empowering families and seniors through direct services and providing access to government and private programs;
2. Advocating for social and economic equality by building awareness, capacity and solidarity within the community;
3. Unifying multiple generations of Vietnamese Americans by promoting cultural traditions, history, art and language.

In 1979, in the heat of a Vietnamese immigration boom, a group of Vietnamese Americans banded together to provide mutual assistance to each other, and to other immigrants that needed their help. With the initial goals of addressing the needs of refugees after the Vietnam War, and helping with refugee resettlement, the Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association (MVMA) was incorporated as a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organization in 1979 and is the oldest Vietnamese American community-based organization in Maryland. Since then, the organization has been evolving to provide more specific and effective services to its clientele. In 2004, MVMA created structured and formalized programs to meet the growing, complex needs of the Vietnamese American community. Over the years, MVMA has changed from a volunteer-run organization to a staff-based nonprofit, which has allowed for an exponential increase in staffing and revenue.