The HCN, a subsidiary of Hmong Threads, LLC, gives back to the Hmong community. Its inceptive mission, “Project Fishing,” launched in 2021 and is based off the notion “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

With Project Fishing, we help third-world communities and villages establish businesses to sustain social and educational programs.

Born and raised in San Diego, CA I spent my entire youth and young adult life in a bubble. Then I took a vacation that turned into something so much more. I began to understand my roots and where my community of Hmong came from.

In Thailand, while on a boat ride across the Mekong River, I saw for the first time how wide it was, with fast-moving, strong current. Emotions I’d never felt before hit me like a wave as I considered the many lives that perished in those waters. Hmong people who tried to escape death, only to meet it.

An entire generation, essentially, was lost to this river. A river that protected —by dividing Laos and Thailand—and killed—by taking so many bodies and souls of our Hmong. While many made it to safety, so many drowned in the pursuit of escape from prosecution and genocide.
I was and always will be a product of that history—one of the lucky few that survived.

I saw my family in a new light as I thought of my mother and father crossing the river with my older brother, then just a newborn, while families around them were swept away.

In Laos, I visited the sites where our Hmong fought alongside the U.S. CIA in the Secret War. I walked the path my ancestors walked before me, those who sacrificed to give me the privilege of living a life of endless opportunity.

My father was a soldier in this secret war, where bombs, gunfire, and the smell of death were a normal part of life. Home was wherever they stopped to rest before heading on to the next. I thought about my father’s PTSD, and the anger we never understood growing up.

I thought of how newborns were drugged to silence them, so that their cries didn’t alert the enemy. How many were overdosed and never woke up.

Then I visited Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where Hmong mothers, sons, and daughters were abused, raped, and some killed by the guards. What incredible strength and relentlessness, just to survive.

Unbeknownst to me, I was in the birthplace of Ong, my yet-to-be wife.

The spirit of the Hmong rises from this history. The undying spirit of men and women who created a new life in a new world with just the clothes on their backs. Who stayed true to who they were and what they experienced, yet looked forward to what they could become.

The sacrifices of those before us can never be repaid or forgotten.

I returned to the United States from this journey to the past with an enlightened determination to honor my history by doing my part in creating its future.