Benefit Will Aid Refugees

After a couple of quiet years, the UC Irvine students behind Project Ngoc have brought back their annual fund-raiser in a big way.

Project Ngoc was founded on the campus in 1987 to assist Southeast Asian refugee camps by sending money and volunteers. During the project’s first years, annual summer benefits featured mostly student talent in campus theaters.

But this summer the group has booked some of the top entertainers in Little Saigon and will mount the show in the upscale Irvine Barclay Theatre. The show, Sunday at 2 p.m., will feature about 15 pop singers, including Cong Thanh, Lynn, Phuong Hong Que and Don Ho (not to be confused with the Hawaiian Don Ho), doing two songs each with a house band.

Also on the program: traditional Vietnamese music and dance, along with acrobatics and a short drama performed by the group Club O’Noodles. The show will be hosted by Viet Dzung and Minh Phuong, disc jockeys with Little Saigon Radio.

“We’re trying to revive the tradition (and) we’re trying to take it to another level,” said Tuan Ho, a UCI graduate directing the event’s organizing committee. “This time,” he noted, “we have all professional singers.”

Ho estimates that the show could raise more than $10,000. All the performers are donating their time and all proceeds will benefit Project Ngoc, which was named for a Vietnamese boat person killed by Thai pirates.

The main purpose of the show, though, is to “spread awareness of the refugee issue,” Ho said. The camps are scheduled to close in the next year, and remaining refugees are to be returned to their countries, which is one reason the organizers decided to make this year’s show more ambitious than usual.

Ho said only single seats remain on the theater’s main level but that tickets to the balcony will be available at the door.

* A benefit for Project Ngoc takes place Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $15 to $25; $12 for students. (714) 854-4646.