Partner Spotlight: White Center Community Development Association (WCCDA)
The White Center Community Development Association (WCCDA) has deep roots in the community, embodied in their ability to organize and implement community vision.
“Our work is to elevate the voices of families and communities in White Center. We have the ability to build and hold relationships in a different way — relationships that are centered on an anti-racist, relational approach to systems change,” says Sili Savusa. “The story of the WCCDA is really about the community getting a sense of their own power.”
A project for self-determination and community ownership, the White Center Community HUB shows that power coming to life. Led by the WCCDA, in partnership with Southwest Youth & Family Services, HealthPoint, Capitol Hill Housing and King County, the new building will provide valuable education, health and housing services while embracing White Center’s cultural diversity and sense of community.
Communities of Opportunity supports the WCCDA in their community-building and trust-building work. That work has created a strong foundation for the HUB project throughout the early phases of planning and pre-development.
Designed in response to the identified priorities of White Center community members, the HUB development is envisioned to be a place of “Hope, Unity and Belonging,” a place where working families can find affordable housing along with essential services that provide stability and create greater opportunity. The vision for the project includes the creation of 86 high-quality affordable homes and a place of learning, health and welcome where the community can connect.
The HUB will celebrate White Center’s diversity through art, music and community-wide events and activities. A culturally relevant family resource center will offer alternative education classrooms, workforce training, small business incubation, youth development, integrated behavioral and physical health services and a community garden. It will serve as a home for the WCCDA and other White Center community-based organizations.
As the community works toward an expected groundbreaking in early 2022, the HUB incorporates the spirit of the vibrant, ethnically and culturally diverse community that is White Center, where two-thirds of the residents are people of color and almost one-third of the residents are immigrants/refugees. Acknowledging that the project is on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past and present, the WCCDA and partners are working alongside tribal leadership to make that acknowledgement real in both the design and function of the building.
The leaders at WCCDA hold a unique role in their ability to organize and implement a community vision of physical and social spaces that affirm and strengthen the assets of all members in the community.
Photo by Mel Ponder
“The best way we know how to do this work is to make sure the community is our partner.”