Thank you to Capital One for their support of WILD and financial literacy
InterIm CDA thanks Capital One for their support to our WILD program. We utilized these funds to provide our youth with greater knowledge regarding budgeting, process of financial aid, and creating wealth. WILD youth explored financial literacy including: how to start a bank account, what does good credit mean, how to avoid financial scams, how to apply for college and scholarships and for student loans. We’re working with youth to put them in the know while they’re in their teens so they can take control of their financial future – and to be leaders in helping others in their families and communities do the same. We thank Capital One for their support of this valuable work.
Register for WILD (Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development) Program Fall 2023!
Registration is open for WILD’s Fall 2023 term! WILD (Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development) is a youth program that empowers youth of color (ages 14-18), primarily those who come from immigrant and refugee Asian Pacific Islander families, to learn about environmental justice and civic engagement. In our programming, youth will engage in leadership development, intergenerational community in the CID, and outdoor adventures while earning their choice of a $100 stipend or 20 community service hours for participating in the 10-week program. Our fall program will run from October 18 through December 14 and will meet on Wednesdays from 3-5pm and Thursdays from 4-6pm at 310 Maynard Ave S. For more information, please reach out to skili@interimcda.org.
Welcoming our new WILD Manager, Sky Kili - and also, thank you to King Conservation District
Welcoming our new WILD Program Manager, Sky Kili – and also, thank you to King Conservation District
InterIm CDA would like to welcome our new WILD Program Manager, Sky Kili. Sky has a background in sustainability, community organizing, and youth development. We want to thank Malika Aiyer, who worked as our Program Manager for one year and was with the program for a year and a half. Malika oversaw several successful projects with the WILD program, which included developing our Seed to Plate curriculum with the youth and outdoor experience programming.
We also want to thank the King Conservation District (KCD) for their continued support of the WILD program and our Danny Woo Community Garden. Their support has and will continue to provide the resources to create more significant food equity and food access in the CID and provide greater development opportunities to disadvantaged youth. KCD’s support has allowed youth participants to gain leadership skills and a greater understanding of sustainability. Here are photos of our WILD youth and elders from the community teaming up to prepare culturally relevant foods together.
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Seattle – The City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods (DON) has awarded the Danny Woo Garden in Chinatown-International District (CID) and the Wilderness Inner-City Leadership program $100,000 through the Food Equity Fund to support intergenerational learning programs and infrastructure upgrades and repairs that will support community needs in the garden. The Food Equity Fund is a DON program whose purpose is to invest in community-led work that contributes to an equitable and sustainable local food system.
Specifically, this funding will support operations in the Danny Woo Garden in the following ways:
- Provide equitable and culturally specific food sources in the Danny Woo Garden for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID;
- Provide intergenerational information sharing and learning between elders and API youth about food systems, food justice, and food security through the garden to maintain cultural and ethnic food traditions;
- Provide funds for infrastructure repairs to maintain sustainable food systems in the garden.
The Danny Woo Garden was created through community activism in 1975 and since then has been a vital source of food security and of maintaining culturally appropriate sources of food for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID. Currently, 66 elderly residents utilize close to 100 plots in the 1.5-acre community garden. Over the years, the Danny Woo Garden has fed hundreds of elders. It has also improved their physical and mental health by providing space to be physically and socially active.
Funding will support programs that bring elders and youth together to learn about seed-to-plate practices, culturally specific recipes based on what gardeners have grown, the physical health value of maintaining a healthy diet of ethnic produce, and more. InterIm CDA’s youth program, Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development (WILD), engages 40-100 low-income API teens ages 14-19 in year-round programming, and the Danny Woo Garden provides a live outdoor classroom for WILD programming that supports two tenets of WILD youth programming: Building intergenerational relationships between API immigrant elders and youth; and learning the value of an organic, culturally relevant garden’s place in a low-income BIPOC community food system.
Time spent together in the garden among elders and youth creates conversations and experiential information-sharing among generations around concepts of food justice in low-income immigrant and refugee populated communities. Youth gain a holistic understanding of how critical it is for underserved, immigrant communities and individuals to grow what they eat and have access to healthy, organic, culturally relevant, sustainably grown produce.
“Our vision for food equity and sustainability is to honor what our CID community of immigrants and refugees has given up when they’ve left their home countries, usually out of necessity, by giving them space to hold onto their cultural food practices,” said Pradeepta Upadhyay, Executive Director of InterIm CDA. “We also want to ensure this knowledge is passed down to younger generations. We want these culturally unique ties to the land and growing practices to continue here in the CID. This is why we’ve created infrastructure in the garden to support a learning environment for youth.”
Funding will also support much needed infrastructure repairs and ongoing maintenance in the culturally and ethnically responsive garden including for the pig roast pit, chicken coop, one toolshed, the outdoor cookery, maintaining a seed library to offer free seeds to the CID community and garden visitors, cisterns, a boardwalk that allows access to the garden plots, flower beds, and fences and handrails necessary for safety of the elders.
“The garden gave the land back to the old folks who left it in the old country to strike it rich here. They never realized how much they missed the earth,” wrote Bob Santos in his memoir, Humbows Not Hotdogs, about seeing how the creation of the Danny Woo Garden gave back to the elders in the CID and how much they’ve used the garden. This funding helps support this legacy in the CID.
For more information on all awardees, see the DON press release.
Contact: jwasberg@interimcda.org
WILD Spring 2023: REGISTER NOW!
WILD Spring 2023 quarter is now open for registration!
Know a teen who wants to connect with their API culture and people in the CID, build their leadership skills, learn about environmental and food justice and earn a stipend or school service hours while doing so? Contact Malika Aiyer, InterIm WILD program manager to learn about the upcoming spring quarter and how to register to participate! Contact: maiyer@interimcda.org. Learn more about WILD on our website. [https://interimcda.org/wild/]. Get more details on spring quarter activities (arts projects, environmental justice/climate change, seed-to-plate activities in the Danny Woo Garden, adulting) in the flyers below:
WILD Program
WILD has an after-school program focused on environmental, social justice, community, and leadership building.
The continuing legacy of volunteers in the Danny Woo Community Garden
There is no community garden without community.
The Danny Woo Community Garden is a sanctuary to its users in the Chinatown-International District, and it is an ever-changing space that demands constant maintenance and tender loving care. Its evolution and perseverance over the past four and a half decades are due to those dedicated groups and individuals who believe in the inherent value of green public space in the Chinatown-International District and – most importantly – aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. From the stairs, to the benches, to the artwork, almost every structure in the historic garden not built by a gardener was built by volunteer students or volunteer contractors. Even the seed-to-plate curriculum we teach in the Danny Woo Children’s Garden was created by the thoughtful work of a volunteer educator. It’s in this spirit that has kept the garden around over the years, and it’s in this spirit that the garden was created in 1975.
They probably didn’t call themselves volunteers back then but galvanized by the Asian American activist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the first iteration of the garden was built by young people who had a vision for justice and the willingness to work. Facilitated by an innovative partnership between landowner Danny Woo and neighborhood activist “Uncle Bob” Santos, the humble hillside of weeds was transformed into a terraced oasis for neighborhood elders to grow vegetables, share food, and make friends.
Today we continue to value our partnerships with the many volunteer groups that visit and help in the garden, and we certainly couldn’t maintain the vast 1.5-acre footprint without them. Since January of 2019 we have hosted over 500 volunteers, which range from interested individuals, college classes, large foundations, and neighborhood groups. We would like to publicly thank them all for their friendship, support, and hard work. Here we’d like to take the opportunity to highlight just four of our volunteer heroes:
THE GATES FOUNDATION
On June 22nd we hosted the Gates Foundation for their Foundation Day of Caring. The Seattle-based foundation is the largest private philanthropy in the world, and we had the amazing opportunity to host CEO Susan Desmond-Hellman herself, along with 20 employees. While Susan was enthusiastically weeding, deep amongst a pile of blackberry bramble and bindweed, she listened to us tell her about the current struggles facing our low-income immigrant community and the importance of keeping healthy green space, affordable housing, and culturally appropriate social services in the neighborhood. Working with an organization like the Gates Foundation is incredibly important for the survival of programs like the Danny Woo Community Garden, and we are grateful for their continued support of the garden and of many of the programs at InterIm Community Development Association.
THE MISSION CONTINUES
The Mission Continues is a non-profit organization that serves veterans and connects them to meaningful community service projects. We are incredibly lucky to work with veteran volunteers who bring boundless enthusiasm and fun into the garden for each service project. Linh Thai, the City Impact Manager for Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, has worked in the International District for many years. He brings individuals and families associated with veteran groups like Vets in Tech and Code Fellows to do a lot of literal heavy lifting in the garden and does a lot of the physical work himself! Since 2017 Linh and others have been our most consistent volunteer partners who bring not only people power, but donations and resources as well.
CITY FRUIT
The Danny Woo Community Garden is home to one of the most diverse mature fruit orchards in Seattle. With over 60 Asian pear, plum, apple, and cherry trees, we need a whole lot of help maintaining the orchard. City Fruit is a non-profit organization that helps care for urban fruit trees, provides classes, and brings volunteers to prune, harvest, and nurture trees so that no food is wasted. They volunteered twice in September, harvesting over 500 pounds of apples and pears from our trees. They were all given to gardeners or donated to local food banks, including ACRS Food Bank.
BOY SCOUTS TROOP 254
This Boy Scouts Troop is based in the Chinese Baptist Church in Beacon Hill, under the leadership of Scout Master Tim Louie. We are currently the site of two Eagle Scout projects from this troop. Jiawei Hu decided to do his Eagle Scout project in the garden and re-build stairs in a neglected and steep section near the entrance on Washington St. He said he wanted to do a project somewhere where it was needed, and that it would be an honor to give back to a beautiful community garden that serves a large group of elderly folks. “I hope the stairs we built will encourage more people to look after the well-being of the garden and make it a more welcoming place,” he said. “The new stairs will be much safer for the elderly gardeners to walk on, and so I hope walking on our stairs will make their day.” Nathaniel Wai, another Eagle Scout with Troop 254, is currently re-building a lookout structure in the garden to rebuild one that was first created in the early 90s by University of Washington students.
This beloved public space would not be possible without the support and efforts of volunteers, who have been responsible for the building and upkeep of the garden since young Asian American activists carried heavy timbers up the slopes to create the garden terraces. It has truly been made from the blood, sweat, and tears of hardworking people for almost 45 years!
The Danny Woo Community Garden hosts community volunteer days every first Saturday of the month. Join us for our next workday on October 5th 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM. Bring a water bottle and wear close-toed shoes. For more information visit www.dannywoogarden.org or email us at volunteer@interimcda.org.
InterIm’s Corner: Celebrating community with InterIm CDA
InterIm CDA hosted the second annual fall dinner ‘Connecting with Community’ on October 12th at Joyale Seafood restaurant.
The evening brought together 150 of InterIm CDA’s friends and supporters and we were honored to have the generation of activists who have dedicated their lives for decades fighting for justice and equity for the community, together with our young and upcoming activists who are engaged in fighting for the community.
The program began with a panel discussion titled ‘Continuing the Legacy of Activism’. A panel of three young activists in Seattle, Drag and Drop, owner Ryan Catabaya, Vanishing Seattle, founder Cynthia Brothers, Asian Counseling and Referral Service, civic engagement program manager, Joseph Lachman, and facilitator InterIm CDA, equitable development policy analyst, Derek Lum.
In another session, titled ‘Thriving through the activism’, the staff of InterIm CDA talked about their experiences while working for the community. The event was concluded with activ-ism stories shared by our long-time activists Francisco Irigon, Sharon Maeda, Matt Chan, Leslie Morishita, and State Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos.
The stories of heroic activism undertaken by the leaders present in the room together with stories shared by the younger generation of activists provided an opportunity to all present to be ener-gized, engaged and understand that activism lives on and that InterIm CDA will continue to carry on the legacy of our beloved Uncle Bob.
It was a great night of connecting with old and meeting new friends. InterIm CDA will be hosting the Connecting with Community Dinner on October 15th, 2020.We are excited to once again have the honor of bringing together the activists in the community to continue and advance our fight for justice and equality.
This content was sponosored by InterIm CDA.
InterIm’s Corner: A glimpse of work done by InterIm CDA in Chinatown/International District
This is a photo essay of some of the recent work done by InterIm CDA, including through their housing services programming, WILD programming and civic engagement programming. This content was sponsored by InterIm CDA.
InterIm's Corner: WILD creates documentary film about the fear of displacement in CID among residents
By Andrea Say
On June 27th, Interim CDA’s Wilderness Inner City Leadership Development (WILD) youth program hosted a mini-documentary screening called People vs. Profit: The Truth about Displacement. Around 45 people attended the screening, hosted at Gordon Hirabayshi Place in the Donnie Chin Community Room.
Attendees included various environmental and racial justice activists, residents of Gordon Hirabayashi Place and the Chinatown/International District (C/ID) concerned about development, youth and their families, and City Council District 2 candidate Tammy Morales.
The mini-documentary, an eight-minute film directed by youth, explores how displacement and gentrification are affecting C/ID residents, disproportionately impacting low-income Asian elders.
Attendees mingled together around the large food spread, which included dim sum donated by Joyale Seafood Restaurant. Sabrina Buparat, a recent graduate of Summit Sierra High School located in the C/ID, contextualized the mini-documentary. “We [youth at WILD] contribute to the development and safety of the Chinatown/International District. We have deep and informational discussions about problems in the community, including climate change, police brutality, and housing discrimination and how they are connected to racial and environmental justice.”
Kevin Choi, WILD member, introduced the film as the primary cinematographer and editor. He added, “We were inspired to make this documentary after learning about the history of displacement and how these new luxury developments will significantly change the culture and feel of the C/ID.”
Choi and other WILD youth referenced these developments in their speeches and in their film, which referenced Koda Condominiums. The specter of the Koda Condominium development loomed over the event, as Koda recently broke ground next door to Hirabayashi Place.
In the film, Henry Liu, community organizer at Interim CDA commented on luxury developers’ attitudes: “[The CID] is a landmark not based on the history and culture of the place, but its value in relation to the water and downtown.”
This attitude is reflected in Koda’s promotional material online, as they describe Koda’s location in the Chinatown/International District: “Just outside the windows of KODA rests the city’s waterfront: the point of entry for the area’s first settlers that residents now look back upon in aspiration. An astonishing view of this extraordinary expanse demonstrates that you’re truly in the center of it all.”
Throughout the event, a shared feeling hung in the air of trepidation and fear that the luxury developers will not change the C/ID in ways that help traditional C/ID residents: Asian elders, low-income people, and recent immigrants.
Zhu Huang, C/ID resident and elder, spoke about her fears about displacement in the film: “others are younger, work, and have money. They’re not scared if prices rise… but us elders don’t have any jobs. The government gives us hundreds monthly, but hundreds isn’t enough.”
Elders in this community lack the money and resources to have access to new market-rate developments in the C/ID like Koda condominiums, where $400,000-$600,000 is the range for a one-bedroom, which prices them out of new, affordable developments like Thai Binh, which cost $1,168 a month for a one-bedroom.
Reflecting on the event and the program, WILD participant Edgiemeh Dela Cruz stated, “Our research and mini-documentary focused on the C/ID, but displacement is more than just a neighborhood problem. Displacement of communities of color will continue as the city grows and gentrifies, but that doesn’t mean that we [young leaders] will back down. In fact, the future of anti-displacement activism in the C/ID will continue through the WILD program at Interim CDA.”
This content is sponsored by InterIm CDA.