WASHINGTON STATE COALITION OF AFRICAN COMMUNITY LEADERS

Immigrant Relief: ~~ We surveyed our 21 Immigrant Relief Outreach Specialist from every region, but North Africa and learned that 45% identified rental assistance & affordable housing as their community's most pressing issue, 25% identified mental health/youth program, and 15% identified immigration health. Nearly 55% of the Outreach Specialists communicate with their African community members by phone, nearly 40% text, and a little over 10% via video calls. None communicate with their community members via email, which we have been able to share with local to state agencies as a reason they are unable to reach African community members via their emailed newsletter. Many elected officials across the region and their staff members indicated this was vital information for them to have and caused them to rethink how the outreach to our community members. Our outreach specialists serving community members primarily in Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, and Spokane areas. ~~ In our third year of the COVID-19 Immigrant Relief program, we built the program by exponentially expanding our outreach team, signing MOUs with each member organization or individual, creating a structured training program with a "train the trainer" trusted messenger model that led to our proudest accomplishment which was expanding the reach of DSHS Immigrant COVID-19 Relief financial assistance to every country of origin in Africa for the first time, nearly doubling the rate of Africans receiving COVID-19 funding in 2022-23.

Riverton Park United Methodist Church Migrants: ~~ Due to violence and conflict over natural resources -- precious minerals, copper, uranium, diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt - people are fleeing for their lives. WSCACL worked as a consulting non-profit to the Riverton Park United Methodist Church (RPUMC) Migrants Homeless Program Coordinating Committee and have educated the Committee and Washingtonians about African cultural needs and shared the regional scope of the migrant crisis. We conducted a survey of our community leaders that reported there are at least 12,000 asylum seeking African and Caribbean migrants across Washington state. The leaders shared that many of their asylum seekers are staying in other churches and overnight shelters that are not prepared to address their unique cultural, linguistic, or legal needs. ~~ We supported the Migrants program through providing technical assistance during our educational discussing unique African cultural considerations to how to meet African migrant's needs, shifted the discussion away from "one city's crisis to the entire region's crisis" through our community leader's survey data at conferences and meetings across the counties, in the cities, and at the state level. We also provided consistent on the ground support for Riverton Park United Methodist Church programs including the afterschool tutoring club, coordinated the leaders together to donate culturally appropriate dishes that Latinx and Africans enjoyed over the holidays and materials, and consistently provided food and moral support to care for the many volunteers and staff that worked tirelessly to support the migrants.