BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — She had a successful retail store in Vietnam that combined pottery with flower arrangement and although the creativity of her work translates to any language, Thu-Hong Nguyen is starting over again in Biloxi speaking broken English.

Despite the significant language challenge, Nguyen has a dream to share her work plus help with everything from designing a logo to securing financing.

Peter Nguyen, an outreach manager for the National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies, said he doesn't know anything about art, but he speaks English and Vietnamese and is helping Thu-Hong start her home-based business.

"After Katrina she lost everything," said Nguyen.

Now she is taking pottery classes at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community Colleges to learn new techniques and hoping to borrow money to buy a kiln to fire her pottery and has worked for some of the casinos.

The majority of their clients are in the seafood industry, said Ginni Tran, the operational community builder at NAVASA's Biloxi office.

"We try to help the small people," she said, who need help to wade through the sea of documents required to get assistance through federal programs.

Since Hurricane Katrina, jobs are the biggest challenge for the Vietnamese on the coast, said Daniel Le, who works in the Biloxi office of Boat People SOS. Most of those who stayed in Biloxi after the storm are still in the seafood industry.

"It's not like they had a choice," Le said, since fishermen don't have job skills that are transferable and most don't speak English well.

Some Vietnamese have opened gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants and hair and nail salons, although the economic recession has hurt business.

There are many empty stores around East Biloxi, where Vietnamese businesses thrived before the storm.

Among the notable successes, Le Bakery is back after Hurricane Katrina and serving French, Vietnamese and American pastries and po-boys. On the same street, Hong Ngoc Jewelers soon will move into a much larger building that is under construction across from the current store. The small Hong Kong grocery on the corner is empty but the business has moved into a large store renamed Lee's Supermarket that now sells a variety of American, Chinese and Vietnamese food.

At the New Orleans Style Seafood Po-Boys restaurant in D'Iberville, the combined American and Vietnamese menu draws a mixed clientele. Assistant cook Michelle Vo said Americans like the Pho Vietnamese soup, "and Vietnamese order the po-boys, too."

Owner Huu Dao said the shrimpers who tie up in Biloxi come for his Vietnamese food.

"It's so good," he said, that he recently opened a second restaurant in Petal.

Kaitlin Truong, who leads the local group Asian Americans for Change, said many of the Asian employees lost their jobs at the casinos because of the recession. The skyrocketing insurance rates make it hard to open a business in East Biloxi.

"Many of the small businesses on the Point have not come back and may never come back because of the obstacles in rebuilding there. Many of the Vietnamese shrimpers are struggling," said Trinh Le, community empowerment coordinator at the Hope Community Development Agency, a group that has helped rebuild East Biloxi since Katrina.

Tung Banh, who works for the Catholic Charities' Migration and Refugee Center in Biloxi, said a large percentage of the young Vietnamese men are forgoing working in the seafood industry that employed their parents in Vietnam and now in Biloxi, Instead they are training to become welders and finding higher wages in shipbuilding on the Coast.

Peter Nguyen worked in the seafood industry for 15 years and still helps the fishermen. NAVASA is looking into ways to reduce the insurance costs on shrimp boats and testing nets made of a lighter material that save on fuel costs. The price for these new nets is double the cost of what the fishermen are using now, so Nguyen said they are testing them on one boat to see how it pays off.

Felicia Hillard grew up in East Biloxi and now is working at the Hope CDA and partnering with NAVASA to revitalize the community. She focuses on small business development and is exploring ways to reopen or expand business, including community gardens where the Vietnamese could grow and sell vegetables.

"We have resources for them," said Hillard, who thinks the Vietnamese know to come to them or one of the other agencies in Biloxi for help,

The future of business in East Biloxi is still a blank slate with so much open land since Katrina. Groups of designers came to the Coast after the storm and left behind their visions of a new East Biloxi.

"I personally think the Living Cities plan really scared some Vietnamese folks off," said Trinh Le. "They saw condos, high rises, casinos and hotels on their property in those pictures and didn't understand fully what it meant due to the language barrier. Now folks are waiting to sell their land, or they don't want to rebuild because they don't want the casinos to buy them out later down the line."

She along with residents, business owners and property owners in East Biloxi envision an international marketplace. After two town meetings last year, "It seemed like people, Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese, are genuinely interested in an International District on Oak Street," she said.

Combine that international marketplace with other businesses that will open and Hillard said, "The end product is just going to be phenomenal."

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Information from: The Sun Herald, http://www.sunherald.com