not probably going to be more you think you saw much for taking time to come to our studio would you like to tell us your name sure my name is christine wilson owens and i work at harborview medical center in the interpreter services department and i supervise a program called men which is a website with information about culture and medicine and health topics relevant to caring for refugee and immigrant communities and it's geared toward medical providers as a resource for them to help them learn about communities and ways they might be able to serve them better tools that can help them do that and glad to be here to talk a little bit about that and also about an event that we're participating in organizing that's coming up pretty soon sorry would you like to tell us more events that you're not sure so this is the northwest regional conference for african immigrant health and there's been two national conferences before this and this is the first regional one it's saturday and sunday march nineteenth and twentieth at alder hall at the university of washington if you go to ethno med dot org the home page you can find a link to information about the conference it's geared toward  community lay community members students the folks who work in the health care field and there's over fifty percent ers covering a range of presentations around behavioral health chronic disease infectious disease research in africa and immigrant communities that cultural religious acculturation so what a lot of different kinds of topics will be poster sessions as well  and at the same time as the conference is happening there's a couple of special training offerings one is a community health worker training certificate program provided by the office of minority health  and that is i think the full first day so saturday the nineteenth and then part of the day on sunday the twentieth and then the other training is a mental health first aid training so working with folks around trauma and behavioral health issues and that's also free so and i heard today there's still space in the health first aid training a few spaces left in the community health worker and then there's still space for the conference  students who are interested possibly in health care field will get a chance to see what you know peers maybe who are a little bit older in their community or are working on and then some of the experts around different health health issues you know infectious disease and mental health and get a sense of sort of what might be disparity issues affecting the african immigrant community and other communities as well and and then i  think it's a great chance to network the african student union at the university of washington is participating in bringing in a lot of volunteers so i think younger folks high school students would have a good opportunity to meet you know folks who are just a little older event at the ethnic cultural center which is right near the conference location and that african student unions are sponsoring that and i think they see me dance and food and and performances and that sort of thing  music so again a i think a fun entertainment event but also a chance and network and and meet folks so it just encourage people to take a look at the website at number dot org and check out both these trains the community health worker training and seattle to make sure that these communities are supported in an equitable way which is similar to what has been happening in the water f want these communities to receive the support that they did there that they can help get families that they can't leave like the rest of the american families because out and the whole community for coming out my business i work for my mother my businesses and watch what but i can really speak from the experience of having watched my immigrant parents build a business and the life that goes into that and the whole effort when you build a business the entire family is affected there's parenting that doesn't happen there's birthdays that doesn't happen because you're building that business and one thing that i've heard in our community is referencing you know the support that's being given to the waterfront community but seattle's we're in this really special place and we work as this liberal city that has one of the few economies that's really growing in america where really we do set the tone on so many fronts and seattle does a really great job of trying to live up to what we say our values are and i think that if that's what we're saying then it's really not appropriate to ask for the same level of support that the waterfront communities got it should be significantly higher the waterfront communities were all better  successful businesses with a strong lobby and seattle has this opportunity to say you know we can't do a lot about gentrification some of it is just supply and demand people are willing to pay more and so they get to pay more but when the city has an impact on the people who have managed to make a life there who have managed to be able to afford the rising property taxes and all the other impacts who are able to connect with all the new residents these immigrant and black owned businesses really can serve as the bridge between people moving into the neighborhood and those who've been there and who've been fighting for the neighborhoods characters so i i appreciate the two of you so much for being here and i just really hope that you're able to bring our communities stories and and the opportunity of really supporting these communities  would be walking around and it was a place nobody would want to be around like this and this habit said we were kids so hard to make it interesting colorful and safe and a lot of off friends he doesn't have a job he has to work for somebody else after putting so much effort until much of his thing luckily he had some property at home he was lucky but most of the people kind of the even blew that what would happen to him with  i'm speaking to the choir because you guys are for us but we want you to work hard we want you to do more that's what i know thank you for a biting us in organizing this i mean i'll just repeat a little bit of what i heard heard a really strong community very hardworking people that are willing to take risks and set up their own businesses and put everything they have into those businesses to succeed to support the community to support their families that's that's where i like to think about us but the american dream is supposed to be is what euro doing in our community that's an amazing thing and who i think we are as a city is a city that rewards that type of investment and commitment a city that strives to support its diversity in the richness that so many cultures can come together and bring in a city that's so i think about as a city that's why i want us to be the city unfortunately what's happened with this project and with your businesses is that the city has failed you and i am so sorry it's it's embarrassing that we have so many programs and so many great resolutions and documents and commitments to all the things we want to be and yet we've let down an entire community on this project i can tell you that  i believe the city is intense for good the project was designed to build good infrastructure so that people could have better access to businesses and communities think the ideas w you know all of our community should have access to good roads and good sidewalks and good transportation accidents unfortunately i don't think the city did the work that we're supposed to do  understanding what the construction impacts will be with the businesses and having the deep conversations before the construction projects start to understand how your businesses will be impacted so that we make decisions about our construction projects understanding what those impacts are and how we mitigate some of those i understand that the city had a few conversations with businesses but i don't believe that we had the break conversations where we actually communicated what this project was in to be like and where we actually understood how your business is actually operate and what the real impacts would be a city like ours should know better and we need to do better now i'm the  committee that oversees the transportation department and we will be working in the coming months to figure out how we can be the city that we want to be we need to learn from this and not let this mistake happen again but that alone is not enough i know it's not fair that your businesses are failing because of no fault of you know just so wrong and i'm so sorry the city has made a commitment to bring some money in to help with businesses  i can tell you in words how it makes me feel and i'm an immigrant myself i'm person of color myself and i'm from india you are from africa you're originally from africa but you know there is obviously a very common lawn and i i think we all understand what is happening here many of you are facing  immediate issues with the construction projects in the central district but we know what this is about this is about gentrification you know what's happening this is a much larger process that is happening in seattle and it is not a ccidental you know this is happening big too i mean everything that happens in the city you know in terms of the growth of homelessness with their rent skyrocketing businesses small