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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.