One year ago, when we wrote this letter for our Global to Local (G2L) 2021 Year in Review, we looked forward to moving past the complexities of pandemic life and fully adapting to our new way of life. I’m happy to say that 2022 represented a year of successful transitions, a year that embraced our “new normal” and allowed us to look forward. Zoom, Teams, Slack Huddles are routine connecting methods, but 2022 saw us come back together and connect in-person with each other and with our community.
We are humbled and grateful to our clients, community partners, and funders for walking along side with us to improve the health of our communities. With hope and optimism, we will continue to partner with all of you to create a community where everyone can thrive.
We hope you will enjoy reading our 2022 program highlights. Thank you for your partnership in our work to advance health equity and create communities where all people belong and thrive.
The SeaTac Tukwila Community Coalition formally adopted the coalition’s Collective Vision, an article of statement that highlights the coalition’s mission, values, strategic focus, and desired community outcomes. The Coalition Collective Vision is formalized as follows:
The SeaTac Tukwila Community Coalition (STCC) is a multi-cultural, BIPOC led coalition of community-based organizations. With deep community relationships and lived experience, we work together to address the current economic, social, and racial disparities in SeaTac & Tukwila.
We are known for successfully creating anti-racist and inclusive solutions, in partnership with those we serve. We serve those who are left out of the decision-making processes and furthest to resources and opportunities: immigrant and refugee families who live in South King County. This area is the region’s busiest cultural hub, home to one of the highest concentrations of newly arrived immigrants and refugees.
We work to remove structural barriers to ensure that our community builds wealth and lives healthy lives. We do this by supporting and elevating community and youth voices through leadership development, in-language training (i.e. training provided in different languages), and programs designed using knowledge gained by working on the ground with community. We build community power by leveraging our collective resources. We are building a movement where communities write their own destiny.
The outcomes we’re striving for:
Our community is powerful, and its leaders represent lived experiences relevant to the community. They are policy and systems changers. They create equitable pathways for community empowerment.
Our community has equitable access to economic mobility, healthy and cultural food, affordable housing, culturally relevant health services, and open green space.
Our community is healthy and thriving. Through their impactful advocacy, they are addressing displacements, advancing climate health, and building flourishing cultural communities.
We started 2021 with many of the same challenges and uncertainties that we faced in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued into another year. In spite of these unprecedented times, we are proud that, alongside trusted partners, Global to Local staff were able to continue delivering critical services and programs for the community and remain committed to our mission to advance health equity in South King County.
Our organization also continued to grow to better meet the needs of our community. Five new staff members joined us last year, and we also added two new members to our Board of Directors, all bringing in new ideas and fresh perspectives to help us move our work forward. We will continue growing in 2022 and look forward to engaging with partners and community members, as well as staff and our board, to determine our strategic direction for the next several years.
We hope you will enjoy reading our 2021 program highlights. Thank you for your partnership in our work to advance health equity and create communities where all people belong and thrive.
Global to Local, with support from The Commonwealth Fund, has launched a new resource offering guidance for health care delivery organizations, community-based organizations and others to support application of lessons from global health to improve primary health care in the U.S. While these lessons will apply broadly, primary audiences for the resource and implementation guide are those caring for populations that have historically not been well served by the health system. Primary health care” is an internationally developed concept that extends far beyond delivery of health services, and that emphasizes community empowerment and multisectoral collaboration to improve health and health equity broadly.
Since its founding in 2010, Global to Local has looked abroad for ideas and inspiration to guide development of its programs in South King County. Along the way, G2L has been privileged to interact with many others with a shared interest in incorporating global learning to strengthen their work in the United States. However, despite broad acknowledgment that all health is global, and that we have much to learn from the rest of the world, there is little existing guidance for community-based organizations or health care delivery systems on HOW to go about identifying and implementing lessons from global health. Along with a panel of experts, Global to Local developed a framework for global learning that outlines key steps that organizations can take to identify and adopt promising approaches from other countries. In addition to an extensive collection of resources to support identification and adoption of effective strategies and programs from throughout the world, the guide includes a self-reflection tool to help organizations determine how prepared they are to implement global learning, and a compilation of suggested activities that can stimulate progress.
The Global Learning for U.S. Primary Health Care resource and implementation guide can be found here.
FIN is excited to find their next Market Relations Manager!
The Market Relations Manager is responsible for cultivating partnerships and development of market and sales channels for businesses in the nonprofit Food Business Incubator. This position manages the development and coordination of off-site sales (outside of Spice Bridge) such as farmers markets, pop-ups, and new satellite vending locations under development and anticipated to open in 2022. FIN is looking for someone with food industry and marketing experience to support women of color and immigrant entrepreneurs to start and grow thriving businesses. Learn more and apply here.
The last year and a half has had a profound impact on everyone around the world and reshaped every aspect of our daily lives: our social connection, our family and personal life, our work life, and the vibrancy and health of our communities. At Global to Local, like many organizations big and small, we have adapted, shifted, and innovated to do our best to respond to our community’s needs. It is in times of disruption and uncertainty that we must focus on our sense of purpose and regain clarity about what we want to achieve. We worked hard to strike a balance between serving our community while also rebuilding a team that can navigate us through the pandemic and thrive in a world forever changed by COVID-19. So far in 2021, our staff have helped distribute the COVID-19 vaccine to 238 people, while continuing to educate communities about the vaccine, how to stay safe, and offer support for other needs such as housing, child care, mental health, and access to food. The entrepreneurs in our food business incubator at Spice Bridge continue to supply hot meals for individuals and families hit especially hard by the pandemic. Our team will stay ready and responsive until we get through this together. And fortunately, our team is growing! Over the last few months, we filled two positions and created two new positions to better align with our health equity goals. We are also making progress in transforming G2L’s Board of Directors to elevate new leaders who share members’ experiences in our communities in South King County.
I am thrilled to announce six new additions to our G2L family. We are excited to have two new board members and four new staff members join our team that will help lead G2L into our next decade of service to the community. Our staff additions will increase our capacity to enhance our community programs, advocacy and leadership efforts, communications, and internal operations.
Collectively, these six amazing individuals bring a strong sense of community and share our unwavering commitment to advance health equity by dismantling the conditions that perpetuate structural racism.
Please join me in welcoming Arni, Jalissa, Demmelash, Michael, Wadii’ah, and Jill.
A.J. McClure
Executive Director
New Staff Members
Michael Moore
Operations Manager
Michael (He/Him) comes to Global to Local having worked in nonprofit administration in Seattle for the past nine years. He served as part of the Development team at Seattle Opera for five years and as Operations Manager and Operations Director at Puget Sound Sage for three years. He loves the challenge of setting up and maintaining systems that help his colleagues feel taken care of while also furthering operational efficiency. He believes that respect for people’s lived experience and personal agency is the key to building relationship in work and in life. Michael is Vietnamese American but considers his status as a transracial adoptee to be the stronger part of his identity. For fun, he likes to play the guitar and the piano, play video games, read about the history of grassroots social movements, and watch YouTube videos of unlikely animal friends.
Demmelash Adera
Senior Program Manager
Demmelash Adera (He/Him) joined G2L on May 17th as a Senior Program Manager. Demmelash lived in Ethiopia before he moved to the United States in late 2013. He holds a Master of Science degree from Strathclyde University, United Kingdom and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Demmelash has over 20 years of non-profit experience from around the globe. He worked in several countries in Africa and Asia in an advisory and management role.
Demmelash brings his extensive experience to the G2L team to support G2L’s community partners and empower our diverse communities to advance health equity the South King County.
Wadii’ah Boughdir
Communications Manager
Wadii’ah (He/Him) is born and raised in Tunisia, and moved to Seattle in late 2015. Wadii’ah worked on different visual storytelling projects including filming and producing stories for the UW’s Center for Human Rights that exposed ICE deportation machinery; developed stories about salmon recovery and other environmental initiatives in King County. Wadii’ah comes with an experience with non-profit work in Seattle and North Africa. He helped IRC in Seattle expand its educational outreach; and co-founded a nonprofit in his home country Tunisia, to spread debating culture and boost civic engagement in the MENA region. In 2020, Wadii’ah obtained a master’s degree in communication in communities and networks from the University of Washington. He’s fluent in Arabic and French language and culture. Wadiiah’s hobbies revolve around soccer, running and biking, and exploring the outdoors.
Jill Kong
Healthy Communities Organizer
Jill Kong (She/Her) is an immigrant trans-woman, who moved to the Puget Sound area from Nanjing, China in 2013. She started her Community Organizing career in 2018, and has since been a part of various social justice campaigns including responsible gun law reform, affordable healthcare, housing justice, and mass liberation. She has also led two successful voter outreach programs for the 2020 WA Democrats Coordinated Campaign, including one that focused on AAPI civic engagement and voter outreach.
During her off time, she enjoys reading, traveling, hiking, and backpacking.
New Board Members
Jalissa Horton
A native of the greater Seattle area, Jalissa (She/Her) fell in love with Culinary Art when she was only a teenager. She pursued her passion and graduated from Johnson & Wales University and Florence University of the Arts in Italy. Jalissa currently resides in the city of Tukwila. In 2019, Jalissa decided to launch her own catering company Chef Jalissa Culinary Co. That same year she became a member of the Food Innovation Network program.
As an entrepreneur, Jalissa brings her passion for serving the community and advocating for food equity and access for the low-income and communities of color. She looks forward to sharing her experience and knowledge with the Global to Local nonprofit organization.
Arni Villanueva Carullo
Arni (She/Her) is a Business Director at HealthPoint SeaTac with over a decade of experience in managing healthcare professionals and working with community partners and leaders. She is a certified lean process improvement trainer and has traveled across the country to coach other healthcare organizations to improve quality and access to care. Prior to joining HealthPoint, Arni served as an ambassador at the Federal Way Chamber of Commerce. She also worked at Virginia Mason Medical Center for 14 years and led multiple initiatives to improve patient care.
She immigrated from the Philippines 23 years ago. As an immigrant, understanding and addressing the social determinants of health became her top priority. Her two years working in a community health center opened her eyes about the barriers to access care that many in the underserved communities face every day.
Nadine, an asylum seeker originally from Chad, found our Connection Desk in 2018. Over the years, our team has assisted Nadine with job searches, and also helped her connect with resources for food, transportation, cash benefits, health care, and subsidies for childcare for her four-year-old daughter.
Last year, Nadine was laid off due to the pandemic, and she accessed unemployment benefits for several months. She returned to work part-time only to have her hours gradually reduced, and her difficult financial situation led to her being at risk of eviction from her home.
Rebecca, our Connection Desk program coordinator, assisted Nadine in securing $800 in direct financial aid. Rebecca also helped her connect with King County’s Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance Program, and Nadine received $3,975 to pay past-due rent. In the fall, Rebecca connected Nadine with $400 in Safeway grocery vouchers. Between these three supports, Nadine was able to save up enough money to move with her daughter from her unstable, shared living situation into a new two-bedroom apartment in SeaTac.
Nadine’s story illustrates a few of the many ways that we’ve supported our community during the COVID-19 crisis. The data also tell a story. In 2020, Global to Local:
connected 842 community members with vital services, such as food, unemployment benefits, and baby supplies
provided 8,700+ no-cost meals to isolated older adults and families
connected 360+ households with Safeway grocery vouchers and Spice Bridge gift cards to buy culturally relevant foods
distributed 4,200 masks to 6+ cultural communities
assisted 185 community members with applications for an eviction prevention program
distributed $25,000 in direct financial aid to 30 families
connected 14 families with zero-interest loans
stabilized and incubated 13 women-owned food businesses
Read our new report, which includes more stories and data showing how we worked within communities in SeaTac, Tukwila, and surrounding neighborhoods to limit COVID-19’s spread and harm.
A.J. McClure will step into the Executive Director role at Global to Local (G2L) on Dec. 1. Over the past three years, first as G2L’s Director of Programs and now as G2L’s Deputy Director, A.J. has overseen our local efforts to serve our most vulnerable communities through our Community Health Worker and Connection Desk programs. He manages the SeaTac-Tukwila Community Coalition, which addresses health and social inequities by expanding food security, increasing community leadership opportunities, and reducing barriers to high-wage employment. As Co-Chair of the Food Innovation Network Steering Committee, A.J. provides strategic leadership for the program, which launched the Spice Bridge food hall and commercial kitchen last month.
Having worked in South King County for over 10 years and calling it home for over 12 years, A.J. brings a personal connection to the work. As a son of Filipino immigrants, he remembers his dad being told an apartment was available over the phone, but then showing up in person only to be told it was taken. He also remembers his mom telling him about the 12-hour days she and her brothers worked in the cannery to help their mom care for their family of five. A.J. understands that many people in the communities G2L serves share similar experiences, and this fuels his commitment to work tirelessly in pursuit of health and racial equity.
G2L was established in 2010 to explore how the application of global health strategies could reduce health disparities and improve health in the U.S. Our founders focused the organization’s efforts in South King County, and from the outset, implemented a key global health strategy—listening to communities about their needs and co-designing solutions together. Using this approach, G2L has developed a variety of successful programs that have increased opportunities for South King County communities to thrive.
Since G2L was founded, its primary focus has evolved from implementation of global health strategies to meeting those needs identified by the community regardless of the source of the ideas. G2L’s board modified our mission statement earlier this year to reflect this evolution. Our current leader, Dr. Jonathan Sugarman, helped lead the process and, recognizing the importance of organizational leadership being vested with representatives of G2L’s community, last February he informed the board of his decision to step down by the end of the year.
G2L Board Chair Lisa Cohen made the announcement in an email to our subscribers, writing:
I want to take this opportunity to thank Jonathan for his selfless leadership during the past two years. We hired him to conduct an unflinching analysis of G2L’s best course moving forward. He has always put the organization and the staff first. He has earned our respect and admiration. Jonathan will remain at Global to Local as a Senior Advisor until February 2021 to complete some specific projects.
In addition to our South King County work, Global to Local is nationally recognized as a leader in identifying successful health interventions from around the world, and adapting these solutions for U.S. communities. We will be exploring continuation of this element of our work with the Washington Global Health Alliance, one of Global to Local’s founding organizations.
In this tumultuous time when so much seems uncertain, I am grateful so many people are undaunted by the challenges we face. A.J., Jonathan, the Global to Local team and board, and our valued partners spend each day dedicated to this critical work. Because of their commitment, I am optimistic about the future for Global to Local—and our community.
Our Food Innovation Network’s (FIN) much-anticipated food hall, Spice Bridge, will open on Sept. 8! The home of our Food Business Incubator, Spice Bridge is a space for women of color and immigrants to launch and build thriving businesses.
We’ll initially offer takeout and outdoor dining, and we look forward to making the space a true community hub with indoor dining and art performances when it is safe to do so.
In addition to helping to create economic security for business owners and their families, Spice Bridge will help build food security in our community. The space will support FIN’s Tukwila Village Farmers Market, which makes fresh, local produce affordable and accessible for community members. Spice Bridge will also be utilized for FIN’s community meals program, which has provided more than 7,600 no-cost meals for seniors and families in need. We are also working on a meal voucher program as a way to ensure affordable access at Spice Bridge.
During our first month, four businesses will offer delicious foods and beverages:
Moyo Kitchen will serve Somali-Kenyan-Tanzanian fusion food inspired by Zanzibar, the world’s spice capital.
Afella Jollof Catering will cook up Gambian/Senegalese cuisine.
Seatango will craft artisan savory and sweet pastries from Argentina.
Taste of Congo will offer authentic Congolese cuisine.
On Oct. 1, four more businesses will join the rotation:
Wengay’s Kitchen will be the area’s go-to source for authentic Filipino food.
Jazze’s will offer Afghani food made from organic, locally-grown ingredients.
Theary Cambodian Foods will serve authentic Cambodian/Khmer cuisine.
WUHA will offer “fast” Eritrean/Ethiopian food options, serving both authentic foods and American foods cooked with Eritrean spices as a gateway to more traditional dishes.
Global to Local facilitates SeaTac-Tukwila Community Coalition, a partnership of community-based organizations that work collectively to address SeaTac and Tukwila’s most pressing economic problems, social issues, and racial inequity. We focus on strengthening the long-term stability of low-wage workers, communities of color, and immigrants to ensure everyone has opportunities to prosper and lead healthy lives.
SeaTac-Tukwila Community Coalition members collaborate to:
support workforce development, career pathways, and business incubation for immigrants and refugees;
develop leadership workshops to empower community members to address local social, economic, and political issues;
boost local civic engagement; and
prevent and mitigate the impacts of displacement of residents and local businesses.
Global to Local supports the coalition by: convening community-based organizations to determine local priorities and strategies; managing contracts with partner organizations that implement projects to advance community priorities; and coordinating internal and external communications.
