Renton nonprofit helps local Vietnamese community thrive

A nonprofit serving the local Vietnamese community now calls Renton home and is looking for volunteers to help with their mission.

Helping Link, or Một Dấu Nối, recently relocated from Seattle to Renton to better serve the growing Vietnamese community in the city. The nonprofit offers free support services and community programs to the Vietnamese population living in the Seattle area.

Executive Director Minh-Duc Nguyen said they have been in Renton, located in the Triton Towers, since August 2024.

“This is a beautiful home to us,” Nguyen said. “We call it HUB. It stands for hope, unity and belonging. We have been welcoming people to our HUB and we are trying to get more word out that we have relocated and we are here to serve the people.”

Nguyen started Helping Link in 1993 after a trip back to her home country of Vietnam. She said many people in the South Vietnam military had to escape Vietnam after the Vietnam War in 1975, including Nguyen’s father, who was a lieutenant colonel in the air force.

“If he stayed, his chances of surviving were pretty narrow,” Nguyen said. “My grandfather told him to either take his family with him, including his wife and five kids, and leave the country, or he was going to take care of us by shooting each one of us because he knew that if he didn’t do it, the communists were going to do it.”

In the U.S., Nguyen graduated from the University of Washington and majored in social welfare. She said the next time she visited Vietnam to see her mom’s family was 18 years later after the travel embargo was lifted. She said it was a major risk to visit because there was no promise that they would be safe and be able to return to the U.S.

“I thought I was pretty vested in what poverty meant, but when I went back to Vietnam, it was beyond what I learned at the university, beyond what I see here in the state of Washington in the early ‘90s,” she said.

While visiting, she saw the scars of the war in people with handicaps or missing limbs from the conflict. She said as an expatriate, she saw dozens of people come to where they were staying to ask for money.

The trip inspired her to found Helping Link as more people were emigrating from Vietnam because of the Humanitarian Operation program, which aimed to provide a path of U.S. citizenship to former re-education camp detainees in Vietnam. With a lack of social service funds available at the time, Nguyen began helping Vietnamese immigrants translate documents and fill out applications for housing every Wednesday night in Seattle.

Nguyen said they later added English as a second language and basic computer classes at Rainier Beach Library. After the library closed for remodeling in 2000, she said they found a location for Helping Link in Little Saigon in Seattle, where they stayed until 2022, when their landlords sold the building.

“We started looking around, checking the south end of Seattle, because a lot of our clients live in the south end,” Nguyen said. “We didn’t know that south end also meant Renton.”

Nguyen said they have the capacity to serve everyone, but because many of them are bilingual in Vietnamese, they give Vietnamese families priority. They prefer to refer immigrants from other countries to social services that can better cater to their language needs.

Nguyem said knowing English is a key to climbing the ladder and getting better jobs in the U.S. She said Helping Link now combines ESL classes with classes to help people become U.S. citizens.

“In order for you to pass the citizenship test, you have to be able to have a conversion before they even ask you the history questions,” Nguyen said. “Then the test is very challenging.”

Nguyen said another service they provide is helping Vietnamese kids gain confidence in themselves and their speaking ability by having English speakers converse with them. She said she would love to have more people help out by reading and speaking to kids.

“A lot of the kids, their confidence is so low because they have accents,” Nguyen said. “I have a kid that said, ‘I am advancing in my program, but no one is listening to me.’”

Nguyen said the nonprofit is run mostly by volunteers and she was the only employee until a few months ago. She said they are in need of volunteers to help accomplish all the projects she wants to do for the community.

“I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have so many partners to help me keep this operation going,” Nguyen said. “If you have the time and want to support Helping Link’s mission, come to a volunteer orientation. You tell me what skill or knowledge you want to share and then we’ll figure out something.”

Nguyen said they have been hosting Lindbergh High School students often to reach volunteer hour requirements, and many of the students continue to help out past their obligations with skills such as graphic designing, marketing and classroom assistance.

People wanting to volunteer with Helping Link can apply on their website. Nguyen said they are also looking to hire a director of programs. More information on the job can be found on Helping Link’s website.