SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Behind the glasses and shy smile of this little lady lies a woman of great heart, Lynn Hoang, who organized the Asian Culture Night at Santa Clara High School on April 7, 2006 to raise funds for the RedFirecracker Foundation in support of the effort against human trafficking. The show was replete with a skit, traditional and contemporary dances, a fashion segment of all three cultures, and trivia to test the audience's knowledge of their heritage.

The show was a joint production between the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA), Filipino American Student Association (FASA), and Korean Student Association (KSA) at Santa Clara High School, as well as Wilcox High School Vietnamese Student Association.

"We actually pulled this together in a week," says Lynn Hoang, who is President of VSA, "it was a very last minute thing."

Despite the last-minute ensemble, the show went off almost flawlessly, and taught me many new things about Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese culture. Their slideshow in the middle of the event was a montage of activities the three clubs did throughout the year. VSA's highlight was the downtown parade during the Vietnamese New Year, as well as the Mid-Autumn Festival performance competition against other VSAs. FASA's highlight was the Battle of the Tribes event in which FASAs from 8 high schools competed in various indoor games. KSA would be involved with their school's multicultural fairs.

During the show I amused over the watermelon skit which was done with actors motioning along to a voiceover audio track. The story recounts a tale of a king with two sons, one of which had the other exiled for twenty years. Their reunion was done through the help of a watermelon that the king found so enticing, he sought the source of the watermelon, which found his way to his son.

The charming Kelly Dinh and David Tran sang a duo together "Eternal Love", and Molly mesmerized the crowd with her sultry voice under a warm reddish glow singing "And I Will Always Love You," both songs sung in Vietnamese.

We had Santa Clara VSA doing a traditional hat dance in beautiful ao dai, as well as an amazingly contemporary traditional and modern stick dance where the female dancers, dressed like they were ready to go clubbing, danced in traditional "múa" styles, and combined it with bamboo staffs in the second half of their dance.

FASA brought out their heritage with a stick dance (escrimas), rapping in unison and in line, tapping each other and the floor in pulsating rhythm.

The fashion show was a tri-cultural collection of various traditional attires, wedding dresses, and male attire, a colorful contrast of seasons, culture, and relationships.

The proceeds of the fund will go to RedFirecracker Foundation, a nonprofit organization aimed at improving the lives of less fortunate Southeast Asian women and children locally and around the world. The organization works closely with Aid to Children Without Parents to help orphans in Southeast Asia become self-sufficient, and in lieu of a NBC documentary highlighting child sex trafficking in which women and children were forced into prostitution, both organizations have made combatting human trafficking their top priority.

"I did read up on RedFirecracker Foundation a year ago," when I asked Lynn what compelled her to helping the organization in the fight against human trafficking, "also, I like to watch Law and Order: SUV. There were a few episodes where people were being trafficked, and that just brought me to tears."