The Asian Community Development Council (ACDC) is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Nevada this year. Leaders reflected on the nonprofit’s milestones in civic engagement, health care access, and food distribution.

When Vida Lin first moved to Las Vegas, the lack of community amongst Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) troubled her despite this population growing rapidly.

“I noticed that our community, we’re not at the seat at the table. Our voices are not heard. I wanted to make sure that we get our community involved,” Lin said. “The best way is to educate them, really educate, connect, and empower community by making sure that they understand how important [it is] for them to register to vote and go to the polls.”

Nevada’s AAPI population has grown by 45% since 2012, according to APIAVote.

Lin founded the nonprofit with a grant for a pilot program to register people to vote. Since then, her team has registered more than 43,800 voters.

Asian Community Development Council

Although mainly focused in Clark County, the ACDC also has an office in Reno. Since its start, it has opened the Healthy Asians & Pacific Islanders Medical Center; administered COVID-19 vaccines; educated community members about the census; accessing health care insurance; and distributed more than 5 million pounds of culturally specific food.

Democratic Assemblymember Duy Nguyen, the vice president and chief operations officer, said despite these gains, the demands are always more than the nonprofit can meet.

“I want to be able to sustain our programs in the long run so that we are able to help our community, regardless of the political climate. So our goal is to create an endowment to ensure that these direct services programs are here to stay. We have a lot of needs around health care, housing, and food insecurity that there has to be a day-to-day response, and not only in crisis,” Nguyen said.

Asian Community Development Council

Nguyen also wants to see more workforce readiness programs for different industries. The two leaders both mentioned that one of the nonprofit’s main driving missions is to uplift the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in Nevada, especially those of immigrants.

“I was born in Vietnam, and I immigrated to [the] United States when I was 11,” Nguyen said. “Coming here, learning English from zero, and learning culture, learning way of life; the advocacy part and the speaking up for your needs is not part of the welcome package.”

Nguyen’s biggest goal is for ACDC to be sustainable for another 10 years.

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