Partner news! Awards and Acknowledgements (February 2022)

Partners in the News

Updated 2/28/22

The newest episode of the Civic Commons We Belong Here podcast, host Frank Nam sits down with CEO of Byrd Barr Place, Co-Founder of the BIPOC Executive Directors Coalition, board member of the Crescent Collaborative and Co-Founder of the Black Future Fund, Andrea Caupain; President and CEO at Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and Co-Founder of the Black Future Fund, Michelle Merriweather; and Executive Director of HomeSightWA of Darryl Smith, to discuss the systemic racism that underlies the U.S. housing system. Listen to the full episode here: http://bit.ly/3vdXRae.

FEEST were nominated to be highlighted at Youth Tell All: Youth Development In King County! This event was a collaborative effort between United Way of King County and Soar, who gathered a commission of BIPOC youth to lead themselves through an in-depth research project. The project had one main goal and question to answer: What can be done to make youth development better?

The recommendations in the report are:

  1. Make young people integral to all decision-making, implementation, evaluation, and feedback processes.

  2. It is vital to develop healthy and safe, as well as honest and consistent, relationships with young people.

  3. Our decision-makers should represent our communities.

  4. Build authentic relationships with our communities while centering the experiences of the people most affected.

  5. Pay us [youth] for the ideas, time, labor, and leadership we contribute to your organization.

And FEEST was identified to be an organization already living into the youth recommendations — to read the report and learn more about the youth commission go here.

Wa Na Wari featured in this King5 story: An oasis of art in a neighborhood under stress; Wa Na Wari celebrates Black vision and voices:

Co-founder Elisheba Johnson said, "Wa Na Wari means 'our home.'"

The Nigerian word refers to this facility, as well as the neighborhood it occupies.

"A functional process of really thinking about how we can use arts and culture to stop the displacement of Black people from this neighborhood," Johnson said.

And in this Seattle Met article from February 28:

Living in a state of constant disorientation, as Johnson puts it, searching for a place of belonging, is a common experience for the Black population still in the Central District after the exodus. “When those physical spaces go away, there’s a huge emotional, psychic gap in people’s lives.” Wokoma says. Wa Na Wari is their way of trying to make sense of a nonsensical world, of creating an island of refuge in a sea of change.

Crosscut article on the opening of 80 units of housing in Pioneer Square for previously unhoused residents, Chief Seattle Club housing project rooted in Indigenous culture:

[Chief Seattle Club Executive Director Derrick Belgarde (Siletz/Chippewa-Cree)] Belgarde believes that housing is just the beginning of true healing for Indigenous people. Having a stable place to sleep and a community that cares is an important step, but it doesn’t address the issues and trauma that resulted in their recent circumstances. Until just over 40 years ago, traditional Indigenous spirituality and cultural ways were illegal to practice in the U.S., which is what Indigenous people would have turned to for healing after the historical trauma of mass genocide from colonization, according to Belgarde.

Because Indigenous people were denied the right of freedom to believe, express and exercise the traditional religious rights and cultural practices, they were unable to heal. Belgarde has said this trauma was compounded by the Termination Act of 1953, which sought to disband tribes, sell their land and relocate them to urban areas, where they were promised housing, job training and prosperity, but were trapped into poverty with no social network, no community and nothing to fall back on.

Belgarde’s father, his family and so many others became urban Indians because of the Termination Act. The fallout of these laws still impacts Indigenous people today. Indigenous people have the highest poverty rate of any racialized group in the country. In King County alone, Indigenous people represent 30% of those experiencing chronic homelessness.

The project is also highlighted in this story by CNN:

ʔálʔal, pronounced “all-all,” means “home” in Lushootseed, an Indigenous language spoken by local Salish tribes.

The nonprofit organization, which says it’s “dedicated to physically and spiritually supporting American Indian and Alaska Native people,” announced the complex, built on what was once Native land, in a January press release.

“Some of our Chief Seattle Club members have not had a permanent place to call home for more than a decade,” executive director Derrick Belgarde said in a statement “?ál?al is their first real home in a long time. It’s a place to live and practice their culture, to sing and bead, and gather together with other Native people.”

Converge Media, Morning Update Show: Africatown Plaza Groundbreaking video

Video from the groundbreaking ceremony for Africatown Plaza on February 5: Organizers hope Africatown Plaza will help the Black community thrive in Seattle's Central District: Speakers pledged to continue work toward affordable housing and commercial space, so displaced residents can return and thrive and current ones can stay.

Also featured here in the Seattle Times and in the South Seattle Emerald:

“I think this moment just signifies what’s possible, when we have a thought, we come together around that thought, and then we take that and rally and push it forward to make it real,” K. Wyking Garrett, the CEO of Africatown Community Land Trust, said in an interview with Converge Media.

Press release here: Africatown Community Land Trust and Community Roots Housing Break Ground on Affordable Mixed Use Development in Central Seattle

Front & Centered coalition member, Community to Community Development (C2C) is featured in this High Country News story, A just transition for farmworkers; As agricultural laborers continue to bear the brunt of climate change, activists in Washington chart a new path for climate justice:

“In order for the industry to keep up the profits that they are making, it means that the exploitation of the workers is going to increase and so is exploitation of the soil,” said Rosalinda Guillén, a farmworker advocate and the founder of Community-to-Community Development (C2C), a grassroots organization dedicated to food, economic and environmental justice led by women of color. “There is a way to make it better,” she said. But time is running out: A landmark 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that massive changes in the global food system are necessary to avert catastrophe and adapt to climate change.

King County Equity Now (KCEN) and Front & Centered are featured in this Community Voz podcast episode:

This episode begins with a panel discussion with Mateo Nube from Movement Generation, Rosalinda Guillen from C2C, and TraeAnna Holiday from King County Equity Now that took place as part of Front and Centered's Just Transition Summit in December 2021. It's a good reminder of what we are talking about when we talk about a Just Transition, especially as that term is used more and more in political spaces that are not aligned with the actual meaning of the words.

Following that conversation, Rosalinda checks in with Aurora Martin and Rebecca Rosado from Front and Centered, who recently visited us in Bellingham.

Watch the Front and Centered Summit intro here.

Dominique Davis, founder and CEO of Community Passageways, featured in the Reimagine Seattle storytelling project here:

“Community Passageways is focusing on the children and focusing on the families by building a youth achievement center that's going to serve the community for decades that's going to house the community, educate the community, we're going to put a bank inside this facility we're going to show, we're going to bring financial education to the community we're going to bring employment opportunities to the community, all in two buildings. All this you walk in a one-stop shop where the community will be served and the focus will be on the children and the families that are raising the children.

When we do that and we get to that space once we break ground and build these facilities we can show an example right there to the rest of the city what it looks like to have a greater and better Seattle. That's the way I see it.”

Resources, Opportunities & Events

Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC) Food Innovation Center Recommendations Report can be downloaded here: http://www.rbcoalition.org/download/17771/

More on the Food Innovation Center and the work to create a food innovation district in the Rainier Valley at the links below:

Save the date for the Best Starts for Kids Transitions to Adulthood funding opportunity!

The request for proposal (RFP) is planned to open on Tuesday, February 22, 2022!

Best Starts is seeking to partner with community-based organizations to support youth and young adults, 16 – 24 years old, as they meet their education and employment goals. Our network of partners will navigate young people to education and employment services such as high school completion programs, post-secondary education, behavioral health services, career exploration, internships, and employment services across the county.

Save the date for the Best Starts for Kids Child Care Subsidy Program funding opportunity!

The request for proposal (RFP) is planned for release on Friday, March 4, 2022!

Best Starts seeks to partner with one or more intermediary agencies to build, administer, and promote a new regional child care subsidy program. The selected organizations will partner with each other and Best Starts to implement a program that expands equitable access to affordable and high quality child care for King County families who are ineligible for or not well served by existing public subsidy programs.

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