ok thank you for coming mr muhammad my pleasure we know each other for some time yes but now you are in a different position you work for the mer rafa's right and the department of office long long time he's the voice of the community i think he's right this is my first time in this place and i have been over years and years and years and matter of the fact we have a really bright idea of creating what they're called african media have benefited and now there came under this administration as a community relations and we have a director who was a what wonderful person and we have a program policy a program a the heart and the backbone of the office and we have yvonne who is the media saw this operation is today is thought about what we have done the office it's going to be two segments this office we don't provide services but we can you know that most of the people are not getting the english language as they need it so that is an unmet need for this and the english language is quite important because without english you cannot be naturalized you cannot get a good job that w sustain you like to lead you to become a self sustained so english is quite important for that and we are supporting supporting immigrant small businesses yes this city is diverse as it can be so to support the immigrant  countries and the police officers because of our program is number one the intent is to build up trust and understanding for what groups because if it is are coming from poor countries they don't know the culture iranian and afghani so those twenty of you do woman is a composite of that it's eight weeks every saturday training from ten to two ten to one o'clock it's intense training and it's a wonderful program it's one of the training that we are  i think you said counted twenty five percent immigrant twenty nine or twenty nine to seattle well seattle when you look at it according to census two thousand and ten i think my daughter to black is seattle african americans ok so that's huge police officers who are interesting to go to the prison cademy there are two things that it's all us number one they said that if you want to become a police officer you don't have to have a college degree number one status you only need ged or what they call high school diploma to reach out to provide information to reach out you know well it's the only thing we have to read what we want to do much because that's the whole of the police department the police have to do an outreach to the community to  people so if you're watching today the interview or the discussion that we had aired you the young college graduates high school graduates who really become want to become forceful officer there is a lot of opportunity you don't have to be a police officer was addressing there is a social workers there are kind of instigators they are detectives there are so many uniformed police officers so we need you the community need you and it's a future that you can you can do it this a lot of it if your computer technology if you have any skills it's a matter of passing that test and when you do that you can change a lot you can do a lot for yourself as well as your community you know when you go is if you can't afford what would happen obviously they'll kick you out obviously they were ticking off and nobody can afford the market because seattle is becoming more expensive city to live people overwhelmingly came express the adams giving what the thing is is saying that you will find a job but those our children who graduate from college cannot even get a job let alone at a few family who office or our fears of is looking at the highest point which one of the problems you think well first and foremost i mean there's a lot of a lot a lot as i said there's a lot of problems there housing is a one  are so many jobs unemployment youth training program youth employment apprenticeships this a lot and a lot especially when you look at the is the african elderly service it's something that we don't really do good in that clinic can you talk about that yes this is a really good opportunity ever this is the first time happening in the city seattle and king county it's called clinic what it is is it is four days clinic which will provide a dental vision and medical if you need major services for those vision and medical we would have a program would have those events karina anticipation is there are two thousand five hundred volunteers walking  serve one thousand people per day one thousand people per day so what happen is it is a first come first s very good program this is the first time that we're doing this kind of program so i urge people who doesn't have a coverage who really need those kind of services to come on shore case to come and get the services from that place please everybody howard good news into exciting news is yes october twenty five yes yes ok that's good very good what other information do you have any message well one of my message will be only need is your name your address your phone number that's all we needed we don't ask you your social security you don't ask you all those things this has nothing to do with whether you have a legal or not and it's free for everybody you know the glasses cost a lot of money but that can be fixed right away is that if you're given the diagnosis of kidney failure you're really given a death sentence essential an affordable the tard for most of us to appreciate how grim it is in that definitely changed my life this condition affects the entire family and the entire families all their resources to try to pay for the alice to sustain the patient for as long as possible but as you can imagine if you lose a mother or father in the family it is a domino effect and you lose the breadwinner of the family and the entire family suffers as seo our organization has been going now for some seven years we typically go twice a year for three or four weeks at a time and we've seen firsthand the ramifications of kidney failure in country well welcome to everybody and thank you thank you for taking the time on a nice day to come down to freemont studios and help support our work this is my not so subtle signal to change the slights on behalf of the board of s a zero we've been involved in a number of projects and we're all grateful that we've had support that's that's growing we have in the audience lots and lots of people who have been with us to ethiopia and i'm wondering if the countless people out there that have been as part of our group would raise their hand please don't be shy because there's dozens and dozens of people out here all the people with their arms up have been have been with this and will continue to grow and keep it that way  over the time we feel like we're getting a little bit smarter about what we're doing and a little bit more organized about what we're doing but i have to admit whenever i speak to americans it always seems really abstract and the idea of trying to explain in this country what conditions are like in a third world country it's it's really difficult in our relative prosperity it's really hard for most of us unless we have heritage from a third world country to really understand what it's like in a country like that where and a big part of every day is focused on merely existing be that as it may that's the situation in that country and we've taken on kind of the chaotic task of trying to help out in the health care  lm the main thrust of our organisation has been education and it remains that way tonight you're going to hear at this afternoon about our dialysis project but we've really come in to dialysis realm backwards if you will because we're approaching it from an educational angle as say oh like kentucky fried chicken and mcdonald's and coca cola we also have our secret sauce and for us our secret sauce is nothing more exciting than education plus tools and to try to make it sustainable what we found out though is that initially when we went into operating rooms and initially we went to the black lion hospital which a lot of you all know of it's really hard to teach when they don't have any equipment they don't have any tools and so i put the tools part in parentheses because it's turned out that in order to do a lot of the education we've really had to bring a lot of equipment to get it started and that's the same with the dialysis project we really are eager to teach technicians on how to maintain reverse osmosis systems nurses for dialysis and all the aspects of that but in order to do it you really have to create the situation in the equipment the machines and all of that to allow dialysis for that sort of how how we came into that i would like to kind of place this project in the context of what else we're doing and if you and yeah dialysis is just part of it and i wanted not to forget the other parts of what we're doing and you'll see some of these projects are advanced to be going on for probably seven years some of them the laboratory medicine project is really new and we have a pathologist from tacoma and acadian nourie are you here if you want to stand up or raise your hands or something there that the laboratory people who have knowingly gotten involved with us and will be helping us in that that's probably our newest newest project at any rate you're going to hear about dialysis tonight you don't need to hear  any more from me it's really a deserving project and i hope you find what we're doing interesting  i'm very exposed at swedish and he asked me if i would consider two years ago going to ethiopia and as mentioned it was mainly to start the  dialysis in other words to die young people who have been in car accidents have had major surgery in their kidneys that take taken a temporary vacation and it was just to provide them time to their kidneys recovered but then it became clear that there were patients in ethiopia who could potentially get transplants and that there was some chronic dialysis there was some long term dialysis available and so richard asked would i go meet with the one of the three kidney doctors in ethiopia and there was actually a patient on dialysis yousef who hopes to come soon his nephews had been very instrumental in helping richard and his team paint the black lion many donations of money and time so richard said to me go downstairs and meet this  how am i going to know who it is he said he'll have a suit in a tie on so i went downstairs and i saw a man with a suit and tie and i got in his car and then i proceeded to use my over active imagination and i was sure he was kidnapping me and going to kill me because i did i could barely speak to him he had very good english but i was very nervous and so after driving all over and lost and getting more and more agitated i my spanish heritage came out and i said i yeah yeah and he said to me oh my god you speak spanish and i said yes and most of the doctors in ethiopia were trained in cuba because of that during the communist of regime there so he actually spoke spanish any did take me in the back of an alley to see a dialysis unit where patients were being chronically dial  was there and yousef was paying for his own dialysis as well as paying for all of these young university students who couldn't afford it and the hope was it wasn't going to be permanent eventually the hope was that they would get transplants which the ethiopian government does allow and they do have the medications for a so i think the goal has been that richard is to establish more chronic dialysis help people bridge people to transplant patients because transplantation is affordable and is available in that country and you step hopefully will be coming soon but it is an incredible mission and i have learned a lot and i'm hope that all of you will donate because i think a lot of good will come from this thank you heard a lot tonight from other people about this effort to build a a private a public kidney dialysis center the first one in ethiopia a project of seattle alliance outreach and primarily doctors and medical staff from swedish medical center here in in seattle now my work is primarily is i tell stories i write novels i write short stories  what that means is that i make things up i imagine people in particular circumstances particular conditions in which they've got to grapple with whatever kinds of forces are in their life be they cultural or social or historical whatever it is that's pressing on them and putting them in a in a situation where they must confront the realities of their existence and  my hope is that in doing that that people will come to empathize and relate to empathize with and relate to the people that they confront that they come they encounter in my work so you know that's what i do i try to make people's lives real for readers and i'd sort of like to engage in that in that task a little bit a little bit here tonight really working from this is handout that you got at the door which begins by telling you that kidney failure is usually a death sentence anything for all but the very rich now you can read that and your eye and your mind can slip right past that go on to the next sentence without really gripping or grasping what that actually means in the human sense for an individual the reality of it and the tragedy of it i think to do that you have to imagine yourself in this situation you know you have to put yourself there in order to feel what it must be like a little bit further down on the page it says that one week of dialysis costs two hundred ten dollars in ethiopia but the average income many he has about three hundred eighty dollars a year so let's think about that for a minute rounding off the numbers let's say that the income your income is four hundred dollars a year let's say that you make four hundred dollars a year and let's say that one week a kidney dialysis is going to cost two hundred dollars put it in our terms let's say you make eighty thousand dollars a year and your talk your doctor is told you that you need this kidney dialysis and without it you won't live and you asked the doctor how much it cost him just as well for one treatment and you're going to need this for the rest  your life but just for one treatment for one week worth a treatment it's half of your annual income it's forty thousand dollars you know and there's nothing in your society there's nothing that your government's going to do for me and there's nobody around you who can change those circumstances for you and you leave that office and you go home and you tell your family about that situation you go to bed at night and you say you know what i just heard today that i'm dying right i mean that's what that sentence means put in specific terms about an individual kidney failure is usually a death sentence in ethiopia for all but the very rich actually mean something real for individuals in this world  now in this country nearly all patients who have kidney failure they get their treatment through private insurance or through medicare and it ends up costing us on average about well under one hundred dollars per year our insurance covers it so here in this country when you go to the doctor in the doctor says guess what you have a problem you're going to need this kidney dialysis every week for the rest of your life you go home and you say you know what i have a problem but fortunately it's solvable yeah it's a little bit of an inconvenience three days a week i have to go somewhere and lay around and read a magazine but i'm going to live and it's not going to cost me very much there's a huge huge difference between realities in this world  and for us to relate to that reality in another place to see it feel it know about it to understand it is what makes us see the legitimacy and the rightness of you know raising our  tonight for this very good cause now that said there are hundreds there are a limitless number of good causes in this world and when i went to ethiopia last november i went with a list organizations and agencies nonprofits are all in gauge very very good work a list of those that had been suggested or recommended to me by people that i respected and so i was there in addis ababa looking at various groups working in various on various problems literacy health education social justice you know whatever it might be and i felt drawn i have to tell you to all of them at the same time being realistic i knew that i could not help all of them that's reality i had to pick and choose and i had to apply some criteria to the situation that i was in and i'm here tonight talking about essay you know and this kidney dialysis project because this one frankly ended up making the most sense to me really for two reasons one of them is that this project is sustainable this project is not just about building a kidney dialysis center this project is about training people to continue to center on an ongoing basis so that when the doctors leave the project doesn't come to an end now you know that this stain ability is is there in a lot of non profits and a lot of nonprofits look to make that happen to make what they do sustainable to make sure that it goes on but not all of them have the maturity and the organizational experience that you're going to find with say you know why because as c e o has failed in this in this regard in its past it has gone out into the field it's put in a huge amount of energy and effort and it has come home and said you know what everything we did the seed we planted there was no water for it had dried up and it died and so they've been wounded they've learned from their mistakes they've matured and they're not going to let that happen again so this is a veteran organization with an organizational history of failure that has put it in a position to really care about sustainability in a mature way and ensure that it's going to happen and i think  you know that's definitely one element about this project that has drawn me to it there's a second one i went there i looked at a number of projects i was impressed with many of them but what made us say the kidney dialysis project stand out for me was volunteerism this is not an organization that has a huge amount over ahead they don't have a central office they don't have an administration they're not raising money every year to pay people salaries and just to keep the operation rolling you can look at their books and you can see that the vast majority of the money they raise goes directly to work why is that because everybody who's doing anything for asio is a volunteer there are no salaries and not only are they volunteers they are the primary and major donors to this project in this regard the doctors and the medical staff and the people from plumbers without borders who go over there they go over there on their own dime they pay their way back and forth they pay for all their expenses while they're there we're talking about a lot of money to do those things more than once a year and furthermore all of these people pass on this on the on the income they might have made if they had been here instead of being there talking about a team of dedicated caring people who in sum total are putting in well over one hundred thousand close to two hundred thousand dollars a year on top of their volunteer time into this now that impressed the hell out of me you've got an organization with a volunteer base of dedicated people who are willing to put their own money behind this project and you've got people who have been burned in the past with regard to sustainability and are not going to let it happen again and as far as i'm concerned you know looking at the projects that i looked at this is the one i felt like getting behind it's why i'm here tonight and it's why i'm encouraging you to raise your paddle when you get the chance thank you very much