Uyen My is a recent graduate from Syracuse University receiving a bachelors in Fashion Design and Merchandising. In her own words, “My mom once said to me, ‘you don’t know what it’s like to truly miss your homeland.’ Her comment has always stayed with me, but I knew she wasn’t completely right. I do miss my homeland and I often feel a sense of myself missing, I just couldn’t put a name to my feelings. I’ve often struggled with the question ‘how do I identify myself and how does American culture identify me?’… I am passionate about people, culture, and art. I want to use that passion as a mean to give something back to my own culture that I believe have given me so much, and I’ve often taken for granted. I would be able to do so through an organization such as Hong Bang. My expectations for the OV experience are to engulf myself in the experience itself and invest myself in its goals and processes. I want to help people recognize their own abilities and integrity as a community. In doing so, the missing piece of me that I am searching for will come naturally. I would never be able to be as close to my Vietnamese culture as I would through becoming and OV volunteer. I am hoping Hong Bang will give me the opportunity to do so.”