VYDC

History & Mission

In 1979, a group of Vietnamese refugees who had settled in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district founded the Vietnamese Youth Development Center (VYDC) to provide neighborhood youth with urgently needed support and practical assistance as they adjusted to their new lives in America. Over two decades, VYDC has built a community of encouragement and empowerment for thousands of Southeast Asian youth in the Tenderloin and throughout the Bay Area.

The mission of the agency is two-fold:

1. to provide immediate assistance to immigrant youth in their adjustment to American life, and
2. to encourage and empower youth to participate actively in the development of their community.

Our Target Population

Over the years, VYDC has grown to serve an increasingly diverse population of immigrant youth from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — from refugee children who fled war-ravaged regions of Southeast Asia to arrive in a new country that was a little more prepared for them than they were for it, to a new generation of American-born children.

Annually, VYDC serves over 650 youth between the ages of ten and twenty-one years old. VYDC staff provides services at local middle and high schools and recreation centers as well as on site. Most of our youth come from the Tenderloin area, but we also have youth coming from the South of Market, Potrero Hill, Inner Mission, Richmond, Sunset, Western Addition, Visitation Valley and Bayview/Hunter’s Point areas also.

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