East African Community Services
About
East African Community Services's mission is to inspire East African immigrant and refugee families to achieve cradle to career success. Our vision is a transformed and thriving generation. East African Community Services (EACS) has provided vital support to King County’s East African refugee and immigrant population for more than 20 years.
Website: www.eastafricancs.org
CREST Representative: Sarah Voltmann Costello (she/her), Munira Mohamed (she/her)
Why did you join CREST?
EACS is firmly committed to land acquisition and development as a strategic anti-gentrification strategy. Our commitment emanates from real-life need: East Africans are being rapidly displaced by regional gentrification. As a result, we are seeing families uprooted and separated; many being forced to move as much as hour South for survival.
If you are working on a project, what is the project, where is it located, and who is it for? What is the vision and purpose of your project?
EACS is well into the development of a land acquisition plan including: the identification of two, South King County lots, including acquisition and capital campaign developmental costs.
What are you proud to have accomplished so far related to your project or related to your community stewardship of land efforts?
We are extremely pleased to announce that EACS has convened a collective of BIPOC community activists, nonprofit executives as well as County and State elected officials. The Collective is actively advocating for EACS' land acquisition strategies in multiple avenues of influence: government, corporate and private foundation sector.
What are the next steps for your organization in realizing your project vision?
Working with our BIPOC Collective to acquire two properties for our low-income housing and Youth Empowerment Center. Specifically, we are working very closely with strategic elected officials within the BIPOC Collective to secure the land and the necessary funding to legally acquire it (fees for transferring ownership, architectural/development plans and associated fees)
What support and expertise are you looking for?
Increased Community Support, Capital Campaign and major fundraising Capacity Support, seed money to cover fees associated with acquiring the property.
TraeAnna Holiday, CREST cohort member from Africatown Seattle:
"I am so honored to be a part of what Puget Sound Sage is doing in this city. They brought together 20 organizations who may not have known each other, and together we are taking progressive models that are happening across the nation to reform and develop our spaces, have ownership in our spaces, create and rebuild our communities, and reclaim what has been taken from us. I represent Africatown Seattle, and if you know of what the Central District has gone through - it has suffered a great deal of gentrification, inequity and displacement. Africatown is working hard on the ground to develop buildings that are bringing our communities back.
For me, this is very personal. My family was displaced in 2003 and my parents had to buy a home in Federal Way. I have never known of Federal Way before. I grew up in the Central area, and it was all I knew for my whole life. It was so heartbreaking to my mother for us to have to move. We are one family, but displacement has affected so many more. This is why I’m so excited to be a part of this cohort. With the work of Puget Sound Sage, I am learning more on how to do this in a progressive way, ensure that we keep affordability for our communities and for our people, and to come back to spaces that we grew up in that we know and love.”