Project Porchlight Blog

The Vietnamese Autumn Moon Festival takes place in October, a time when parents have been busy finishing the last harvest of the season. The festival presents an opportunity for parents to make up for lost time with their children. On October 3, Boat People SOS (BPSOS) is a national community-based organization that assists immigrants from Vietnam, celebrated the Autumn Moon Festival at their office in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Festivities included celebration songs, the retelling of traditional Moon Festival legends, a huge golden dancing dragon, and delicious moon cakes and gifts for the children.

“The festival itself is meaningful on several different levels,” explains Nancy Nguyen , Delaware Valley Branch Manager for BPSOS (pictured here). “Culturally, it is a time for parents to dote on their children and to strengthen the relationships between parents and their children because it emphasizes that all of the labor and all of the work that older family members put out is for the benefit for their children and their nieces and nephews to prosper in the future.

“On another level, the event is really important for community building in Camden,” adds Nancy, pointing out that the Vietnamese community in the Camden area numbers approximately 3,000 families. “While we are a small community, we are a tight-knit community, and events like this reinvigorate and reestablish that sense of community.”

Project Porchlight joined this year’s festival and took that opportunity to educate folks about the energy savings offered by compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. A total of 100 CFL bulbs were distributed, part of Project Porchlight New Jersey’s campaign to distribute energy-efficient light bulbs to residents across the state. Project Porchlight is an initiative of One Change, and the campaign is made possible thanks to funding by the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) and New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program (NJCEP).

“It’s important for organizations like Project Porchlight to attend our events and to be a part of our events, because it brings a shared sense of interconnectedness between different communities,” says Nancy. “It doesn’t hurt, too, that for a festival that focuses on giving children lanterns that what Project Porchlight literally brought were energy-efficient light bulbs.”

The festivalgoers were thrilled to receive the CFL bulbs, and Nancy was thrilled to connect with Project Porchlight. “I appreciate that Project Porchlight takes a grassroots approach to changing the behavior of people and increasing their knowledge,” she says. “Going door-to-door and telling people about the benefits of CFL bulbs and how to dispose of them--I think it’s great.”

When it comes to protecting our environment, simple actions matter. Even something as simple as changing a light bulb is important. “Educating our community about how they can make small changes today to help ensure that their children can enjoy the same type of environment or a better one in the future is important,” says Nancy. “It’s a critical investment in their children’s future, which is why they’re in America in the first place.

“The Vietnamese community has not been approached in the general thinking about how the environment around them should be shaped--and is shaped—by environmental changes or urban planning,” adds Nancy. “We’re not part of the conversation, but we should be. That’s why I appreciate organizations like Project Porchlight for including us in the change work that it is doing.”