HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Committees - Cultural Communities Board - 10/24/2017KENT CULTURAL COMMUNITIES BOARD MEETING
October 24, 2017, 6:30 pm
Kent Senior Center
600 East Smith St
Kent, WA
Attending: Yusuf Bashir, Marvin Eckfeldt, Mizanur Rahman, Ted Schwarz, Cesar
Rangel, Vaivao Semisi-Tupou, Satwinder Kaur, Sara Franklin-Phillips, Herbert
Carey, Ta Kwe Say and Sharndeep Kaur
Absent: Norma Maldonado, Sonia Morales, Samiha Bhuiyan, Guystave Sebatware,
Rand Al Hammadi, Marwa Almusawi and Davies Chirwa
Elected Officials, Staff & Guests: Mayor Suzette Cooke, Brenda Fincher, Dana
Ralph and Uriel Varela
Vice-Chair Kaur called the meeting to order at 6:30 pm. Satwinder welcomed
everyone
Roll call – attendees listed above.
Changes to the Agenda
No changes to the agenda.
Approval Minutes
The minutes from the August meeting will be emailed by Uriel.
Announcements
Semisi noted that there is an Asian and Pacific Islander scholarship for those
attending Highline college and South Seattle College. The application is currently
out. He will email the website to the board. Last year 2.5 million dollars in
scholarships for undergraduate and master’s students was distributed for Asian and
Pacific Islander students.
Ted – Local elections will be held on November 7th. Local elections affect us the
most.
Mayor Cooke – Drop boxes for ballots are available around the city. She also noted
that your voting record is accessible by the public. Who you voted for is not public
information. This is important if you ever want to run for office.
Mizanur – The Bangladesh Winter Festival will be held on Saturday November 4th at
Summerset elementary in Bellevue. Music, dancing and food will be available.
Mizanur also mentioned that the Bangladeshi community in Washington raised 25
thousand dollars to send to Bangladesh. The money raised will be used to provide
running water and toilets for the incoming refugees.
Pastor Carey – His church is starting an after-school program to address the school
to prison pipeline. He noted that 1 in 3 African American youth born after 2001 has
a 33 percent chance of going to prison. The program will be available for all youth.
Math and English tutoring will be available for the youth. The church is hoping to
secure a van to transport the youth to and from the after-school program. The
program is also hoping to provide dinner for the youth. The church is currently
looking for local young adults, who’ve done well for themselves, to come back and
mentor the youth. The proposed start date for the after-school program will be the
first of the year.
Semisi – said that he might be able to secure used computers for the youth
program.
Ta Kwe – Jewish Family Service (JFS) entered a video to a competition for a 25
thousand dollar grant from Starbucks. Starbucks is selecting the top 40 videos. 25
finalist will be selected from the top 40.
JFS has a new refugee soccer team. The team joined the Mexican Azteca soccer
league.
Yusuf – He is also working on expanding his own after-school program. Yusef and
his work partner Abdulah are running the program. They are teaching English to
both children and adults. The program is currently running in two shifts to
accommodate the growing interest in the program. Adults and children are learning
about U.S. culture as well as Somali culture. Yusuf stated that Somali-Americans
and some refugees have a tough time differentiating between Somali culture and
their religion. The program currently has 50 children on the waiting list.
Marvin – 3 years ago, churches in Kent and citizens organized and created a group
by the name of kentHOPE. The group works on the issue of homelessness in Kent.
KentHOPE is having their annual fundraiser on November 4th at the Renton pavilion.
They raised 70 thousand dollars last year.
Mayor – Emphasized that the Kent senior center needs more participants of color.
Dana Ralph – The 4th annual fundraiser for Shop with a cop will be held on
November 9th. The organizing committee works with Kent Youth and Family
Services, Target and the Kent police department to identify 30 children to pair off
with a cop. Each child receives a $100 dollar Target gift card that they can use to
purchase anything they’d like for the holidays. Donations for the program are tax
deductible.
Uriel – talked about the Community Connections program that he is currently
working on with King County Metro. He asked the board if they’d be interested in
being stakeholders.
Uriel also mentioned that he has been working with Toni Azzola, the Neighborhoods
program coordinator about having the Cultural Communities Board attend the
annual neighborhood groups meeting.
Candidate forum discussion
Ted was not able to attend the Mayoral forum organized by the group, but he was
disappointed with the turnout. He stated that 26 people attended the forum and
that more participation from other cultural communities was needed.
Yusuf explained that he cannot talk for other communities, but that the Somali
families often have many children. The families have to take their children to these
meetings, but often don’t show up because of a lack of childcare. According to
Yusuf, the Kent school district started offering childcare for their parent meetings
and it has helped attendance. Yusuf then stated that they Somali community needs
to see a benefit to any meeting if they are going to participate. The community also
does not feel part of the civic process because of the language barrier.
Semisi said that the Asian Pacific community is very complex. Samoans are
nationals, but do not hold U.S. citizenship. He stated that conducting outreach to
churches and getting pastors involved may help engage his community.
Marvin stated that the forum model that was used doesn’t work for all communities.
He said that the most important part of the forums were the questions that were
asked by the group. Candidates were not asked those questions at the other
forums.
Brenda said that they KBAC forum asked similar questions, but more specific to the
African American community in Kent.
Dana stated that all candidate forums were recorded and were available for the
community to see.
Satwinder said that this election cycle had too many candidate forums. Her
community communicated that they had attended other forums and had already
decided who they were supporting.
Marvin then suggested that it would be nice to invite all of the candidates to just
one event. The Board would need to offer food and childcare.
Dana then stated that the Chamber of Commerce had done something similar in the
past. They called their forum the candidating forum. All candidates moved around
the tables and would have a conversation with each table. Each person at the table
would also have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions.
Cesar said that the group needed to do more marketing at restaurants and through
personal connections.
Brenda asked the group about how elections were done in their country of origin,
and if there was something similar that could be done here.
Mayor Cooke then stated that when she ran for mayor the first time, she was asked
to speak at various places of worship. She went to were the people were, taking the
show on the road.
Uriel said that Kent21 had all of the videos.
Meeting adjourned at 8:00 pm.
Minutes drafted by Uriel Varela, Community Engagement Coordinator for the City of
Kent.