will i'm twenty six years old i'm from born and raised here in seattle washington our parents our governments and me i graduated from ballard high school and i did my undergraduate studies at howard university in health management african studies and i did my graduate school work at columbia university mailman school of public health and receive my master's in public health concentrating in epidemiology and my name is purple tran boy i'm from seattle washington born and raised in the central district parents are michael and robin travel and i also went to howard university and studied so and got my bachelor's and now i'm back here in seattle and we're going to talk about our experience here here today we're going to do is kind of speak to our experiences growing up in seattle attending historically black college and how that has impacted the work that we do in the projects we work on our work experience and some of the some of the things that we've got going on within the community so i think i can start briefly just explaining what we've done in the community as well in two thousand and six my brother along with a bunch of people in our family we started a basketball tournament called hope for hope to to bring to light issues a youth youth violence and gun violence in city of seattle which has been coming up as a bigger and bigger issue every year and we just we have put it back on this year at seattle pacific university where my brother younger brother duggan is a student and currently what i do i've done a lot of research and in the public health field i work for a record university on a project called the black life study where we do research on how racism affects health outcomes including cholesterol diabetes and heart disease and  i'm currently teaching at a school that i started called the flight up school where we help middle school and high school students get on a career path and get into college and hopefully pursue graduate education as well  right so what i'm working on now in association with likes in here is performing arts center soon to be like so he's performing arts institute and what we are doing is the areas of black film short film contest basically i started my company back in two thousand and eight and it's a video production company but i also really wanted to work with the youth growing up in seattle i was a part of a lot of different programs and so i just felt that i needed to do something to give back because it howard you know that's what they teach us is that we should not only just get an education but bring whatever it is that we learned back to the community so that the youth can achieve what we have or even more than that so the short phone contest was created to  encourage motivate and expose the next generation of seattle youth filmmakers so we don't just you know put them out there but we give them the tools and show them the basics and then  just let their creativity flow and then they can also like discover black history and also teach the community about it the other thing also the main reason why i went to howard was because i had noticed that in the school district they don't really teach like a story so there might be a paragraph or you know they'll mention it but after that there's really nothing so i like getting back off that to simply because growing up here in seattle a lot of our close family friends and my parents got together and they had like a class forces to teach us about history and culture and things like that growing up but being a student in seattle public schools from elementary all white house school we didn't really get any anything about african history or even africans in america just it would be basically civil rights topics and that's it and it would usually be very brief you know so when i went to howard and i did get exposed to african history in african studies i decided to major in african studies along with my major health management just so i can personally learn and i and many people always say you know african studies is a field where there's not a lot of job opportunities and things like that but it was very important to me just in learning because i felt like a group me as a person and and very much impacted the work that i do now and the work that i've done it very much helped me in that when i came back to seattle i was able to expose a lot of my relatives and a lot of my friends to a lot of the things that i learned and and help them understand why it is we are in the situations that we're in and how university itself has a huge stake in the ethiopian community historically you know the first medical doctor to graduate with the with the m b a in the united states of america was was at howard university in the one nine hundred thirty s you know so it's been a long time and while doing my masters at columbia i lived in the neighborhood of harlem where eighteen zero eight ethiopian merchants along with african american christians started the abyssinian baptist church which was the first black church in harlem you know you know started by ethiopians sixty two when they open the space needle the opening address was given by haile selassie so and the first flag on top of the space on top of the space and it was the government flag so a lot of these a lot of these facts are a lot of times lost on our community and they can be used  empower our our you and and that's kind of what we try to do at the flight schools really empower the youth and give them skills and tools and things that they can use to further themselves in and in getting into figuring out what exactly they that it is that they want to do and when you expose them to a lot of these different things and let them know that there's been ethiopian doctors in america's is the one nine hundred thirty s it makes it more real to them that they can actually be a doctor because people have been doing that you know for almost one hundred years in this country so it i believe that that that that foundation that black house foundation really really benefited me personally and it was it was a life changing and eye opening experience and not only did it benefit me i hope i feel like it benefited my family and my community and that i become a better assett to our community simply because i have said i have a strong foundation in who i am and who we are and why we are here and things like that so we can easily discover what our purposes and the things we're passionate predominately entertainment careers or athletic careers and you know in regular c coms and t v shows rarely do you see first of all really do you see ethiopians you know there are there are black people a lot of times entertainment but they're usually limited to certain roles and certain careers in t v shows you know they really do see a whole lot of successful and well educated black people on t v and that that's something that my life changed when i went to howard because i went to a school full of ten thousand black college students you know so that's impactful and that i know people that are doctors now i know people that are lawyers and have a night where i can even i know accountants i know people in almost every field working for some of the best organizations in america i know a lot of people that have started their own companies and are successful entrepreneur is you know artists and filmmakers and things like that and i mean purple i mean that howard and we're both from seattle you know and we actually had a strong contingent of seattle ice at howard we had a washington state club with about fifty members you know just to so people know there was a there's more black males from seattle public schools that attain howard university right now the knitters blackmails going to tennessee oppose schools at the university of washington which is a much bigger institution you know thirty five thousand undergrads compared to eight thousand undergrads you know so it's actually easier for kids from our community to go all the way to washington d c to go to college and even some of these institutions that they live around you know if i would encourage they used to you know i mean you might want to end up staying over there but i mean i it's funny how the past year you need path works our dad works in mysterious ways and where i even ended up back here and i was not planning on it but it it's like there's a greater joy when you're able to do something you're passionate about and then give back and help that next you know like when the hair or throw the rope back there's just one movie dr squat that i think that i love where he says you know  have to you know when you get over the wall remember to throw that rope back and you know that's what i feel like we're doing and i'm very proud of that you know that i can or that we can create opportunities for us to you know get over that wall you know and i think you know a lot of people always say you know you have to lead by example so i think that's i think one thing the howard university definitely teaches us is that we carry the mantle literally for generations you know of former graduates and that's why as alumni of the school you know we have a love i love my list that includes some of the most powerful people in the world actually you know many african presidents graduated from howard you know thurgood marshall was law a law professor at howard and with his last one brown versus board of education integrate well in the schools in america and that was done by law students at university you know not even not even official lawyers and people that hadn't passed the bar yet you know so we have such a impactful community that we were able to soak up knowledge from you know and i also believe that leading by example it g deeper than that you know i feel like it really it really you have to live it you know so we try to live like live example or you know stand live if you live an exemplary life then you lead just naturally just wait and again you know and in the way you move around and that that educational foundation was the basis for a lot of the research that i did you know and in studying health and studying african issues you know i was offered the opportunity to do research in south africa where i went actually during the world cup in two thousand and ten the first world cup in africa i took a trip to cape town and did research at the university of cape town on tuberculosis and the social conditions that create tuberculosis i have completed a documentary about my research and it will be available for viewing shortly but we have a five minute short of it that will be that will be aired after our interview and you know i think the fact that we have these different connections that we're able to make in our minds about who we are in the different places that we come from greatly impacts the projects that we work on now and being involved in the community and being able to being able to be leaders in our community and  people that you can look up to and say you know how they're doing things that are interesting and they're doing things that interest me and connect to me and who i am you know and i really believe that that's the most impactful ways to because when we when we do things that are interesting it creates curiosity once the kids are curious and really they're there and it's endless opportunities are endless you know once you actually have a passion for something so that's just what we're try were able to receive the best education available in this country and then be able to come back to our community and have projects in programming that we offer you to where they can you know climb the ladder similar to the way we did in and and we support like men who it's tough and we also know that like even the position that we're both in now was is not necessarily only due to hard work and only due to us being intelligent or you know the best at who we are you know a lot of it has to do with circumstance and many people that came from our similar situations come out a bit smarter than us worked harder than us weren't offered the opportunities that we were able to receive and so we feel like we have we area i just feel like things just need to be exposed you know and why who who better to do it in the use you know because it's like killing two birds with one stone not not only do they get the knowledge they also are we're also going to have the ceremony in february were we're going to show like twelve films and then they'll be a first second and third place winner so  everyone wins pretty much in the in the first place winner will actually get a canon power shot h d cameras not the one with the removable lens but it's like it's a really nice camera so and then also they'll get a chance to submit their film to the langston hughes african american film festival so as far as going to how it actually went and then came back to seattle the first time and then left again and then came back but now it's different because you know i also have a sister who's who's dealing with this rare disease and so that actually is  basically just like the bad things that happen in life are not necessarily bad it's like you can use those things to like ignite passion within to create things to help other people who have gone who are going through that similar thing like what it's all about i guess pay it forward is a good way to explain it  and so yeah i feel like going to a historically black college i've heard of a lot of where people have said about that and like it's not really i made the choice because i mean i just felt empty about in regards to my history and if you don't know who you are saying cofa then you know if you don't know your past you don't know really where you're going so i like to piggyback off that and to say you know i think what we were able to gain as far as self knowledge and and what we're able to gain as far as self knowledge creates self worth you know yes and we have we have self worth you know you can realize your potential and have a vision of what you can be in the future you know and even if you know that people that went to your same school have become supreme court justices you know at a time where there was no supreme court justices if you know that people from your school are graduated from your college our c e o c f o knows in companies that never had any black executives you know it gives you that it gives you that knowledge and that understanding that you can new you can do the impossible you know whether people have never done before is things that students from howard have been doing since the beginning since eight seven when the school was created you know people from howard university have been doing the impossible ever since then and i think that that kind of gives us the drive and the motivation and know that you know some of these tasks that we take on you know people look at us say why would you why would you try to do to try to change that change these things like you can do it is is too much like you have to work within the system in the end people say things like that all the time simply because they're overly logical you know and they're looking at it like it's impossible and have an educational foundation and i do actually believe that those impossible tasks are literally just things on a checklist that we can knock out and we can do five impossible things every year you know and so me and probably we were we've been working on to teach students film through my school and her program as a collaboration so we can get students to know who they are themselves and be able to come up with  media representation of who they are and the things they want to change in the places they want to go with all these different things and just i have something that they can keep forever you know and and publish their own films you know and i life skill that they can use and they can create their own companies and make money and not have to you know worry about certain things you know you know they can escape the same similar pathways  college or or you know and it's like knowing that and knowing knowing in the education that we received was entirely poor compared to the people that the educations received by the people that we met when we got to college just knowing that we were entirely unprepared for college due to our seattle public school education gives us the knowledge that we have to come back and you know be part be a part of an alternative education system and i think that's kind of what we're trying to raise we're trying to create for these kids as an alternative education system so that they can actually get educated you know go and just going to school is not education you know and even going to alice does not necessarily equal getting knowledge you know it's about what you will learn and what you do you know about yourself and it's about that's why i was saying i heard students to go like go get out of here and experience the world because there's so much else out there like i actually got a chance to do there's another howard alum who has a program creative minds and can that i i went with them forty in a forty other students from the united states and i think some people from now they're moving into other countries but went to the cannes film festival in there my short film was their short film corner but not only that like they taught us like everything we need to know as far as networking i didn't know then but now i'm like i got it you know it's just like talking to people but that's just another example of what you know howard people do you know and we're trying to just that's not just saying that our people do that but that's what we're doing bring it back here so that they'll be prepared early yeah and i think is that's another you touch another aspect of our education is that we went to college too where there was the biggest the biggest club on campus was the african students o c a you know so there's that's the biggest club on campus you know so you're talking about thousands of students from africa then we have cribbing student association which is the second biggest you know so we're talking about thousands of students from the caribbean and then the then then on top of that you know we have a state club from almost every state so we have louisiana club texas club new york washington's state we have the chicago people's club we have you know clubs that you know from almost every state illinois michigan from everywhere you know georgia florida so that also gives you that  that world focus and that global focus and like it's deeper than just you know where you go into a school where they say this is global studies or international studies but everybody in the class is the same you know we went to places where we studied international studies and globe had globally focus classes where that the student body was global themself you know so we could actually ask people in and get a real life now it's not theoretical it's not just something a book or something that we experienced in and can really have will have a firm grasp because we can call these people we can you know we have people that we know in many countries in africa in all over the caribbean south america and europe you know i have friends from howard that you know work in japan now work all over the world went to london school economics or all over the place you know and i think that really impacted the way i view the world in just making the world smaller for me and making every everybody's life in this world worth the same to me you know because i think in a lot of people have this you know american centric focus to where the life of an american is worth much more than the life of even a may well let you know even more than the life of a canadian but when you have that true global focus you can really understand why the life of somebody from sierra leone is worth just the same as somebody from detroit you know and i think they're really they're they're really sinners your education base you know it and gives you a good foundation for it to move out into the world all right alessio like to kind of talk about what the program that i run now and it's called the fly up school and you can check us out at the fly you dot com t h e l y u dot com and what we do is we run programs out of the local boys and girls clubs we teach classes like s a t n a c t prep we do a history class we have a music program in a film program where we're actually starting out of different programs as well as far as like dance and medical careers and engineering careers and all these different things that the students have come to us and told us that they want and we've reached out and found instructors for the different programs and  think it's important because american education is not focused on a career path you know you kind of go through high school and everybody gets the same education and you go to college and a lot of people you know they just study whatever it is majored in whatever it is they want to do without ever knowing exactly what it is that they want to do and that simply because it comes from the fact that they didn't try anything you know and well our goal is to make them try everything just so that they know you know and they whatever they've done they'll know whether they like it or not and once they figure that out and they can we can get them on a career path early and that is powerful because they can move to they can move through their educational career and there and then on to their actual work career you know in a much smoother transition you know without a lag time between jobs and things like that like they were trying to get them experience even as high school students if in the medical careers or in engineering or if they're in a music then give them experience in an audio production or music video production or audio engineering and even in film like we make students from every one of our programs do short films for us and just a five minute films even about their self because they need to learn about how to present themselves and how to give adequate presentation you know and and we're teaching them like professional skills and i really feel like that's powerful just because of my background my educational background of my work experience background you know and the struggles that i've been through even with looking for employment things like that just because a lot of us don't have solid work experience through our education  had a multitude of internships and things like that and different jobs that i've had so i understand i've struggled a lot less than other people but it's still it's still issues still arise when when we're trying to move through this world you know and we have to kind of teach the youngsters too about that and that's why we do a history class a mandatory history class so they can understand that you know they will encounter issues dealing with issues of racism or issues of classism or predominantly in  a country like america where everything is race based you know there's a lot of issues that kids will encounter but our goal is to give them skills so that they are five ten times better than the other candidates you know so that they can even at least get an interview because a lot of times even if you're ten times better than other candidates you know you won't get that interview simply because of your race and i know in our community need to be community that's greatly overlooked issue because ethiopians immigrate here and  they have no foundation in american history they don't know really what happened they don't know the blood that was shed and all the all of the struggles that people went through just so that ethiopians have the ability to come here and go to public school and have housing and be able to ride the bus and do everything it is that they need to do have health care and transportation and everything you know i think a lot of that's missing so we try to give the students a focus on that because a lot of times their parents are not able to give them that understanding and teach them why they're struggling like that you know and why the teachers my message might not necessarily treat them as if they are intelligent even if they are at the head of the class you know thanks so much you have a wonderful day a