everyone my name is rob and i'm here with an organization called one america and i'm here to talk to about one america and some upcoming events that i think that everyone should know about also going to talk a little bit about civic engagement and the upcoming election so one america is the largest immigrant advocacy organization in the state of washington what we do is we do community organizing all over this state we also do advocacy and policy work and basically we advocate for the rights of immigrants and refugees in our state and all over america some of the things that we do is help people to gain citizenship so immigrants and refugees after they've been in the united states and have had a green card for five years most people are eligible to become citizens unfortunately a lot of people don't take advantage of this opportunity either because they don't have all the information they need or they can't afford it or they just don't know how so what one america does is we offer something called citizenship day and you see this and then sure we can see that we offer something called citizenship there and we have a citizenship day coming up on april twenty first and the closest one to seattle is into coma at tacoma commune the house if you live outside of seattle or tacoma there were also be citizenship days offered on the same day april twenty first in moses lake at big bend community college in mt vernon if you live up north at s valley college and if you're way to south near oregon but still in the state of washington there's going to be a citizenship day offered in vancouver washington at clark college so what citizenship is is an opportunity for those that are eligible for citizenship again if you've been here five years with a green card or if you've been here thirty years with a green card and you're married to a u s citizen you're able to apply you we will have volunteer paralegals and lawyers there at the citizenship day you can talk to free of charge that will help you fill out the and four hundred students trip application to answer any questions that you have about citizenship and basically by the end of the day you should be eligible to apply for citizenship we should be all ready to go so again that's april twenty first if you live in the seattle area or sells a little bit north of here the closest place is tacoma you can go to our website we w w w we are one america dot oh ard she from our information about this and everything else i want to talk about right now so again april twenty first come out if you're eligible to be a citizen get your citizenship one very important reason to get your citizenship this year is because this year is twenty twelve and it is a presidential election year everybody knows what elections are they happen in november every us citizen that is our registered to vote will be able to choose our next president and there are every november we have elections and this year is a federal election so we get to choose a president but there are also lots of other things that we get to choose there are decisions that need to be made locally that fact our social services they my affect transportation they might affect our health care and it also impact our city and our state if you care about your community and your family and you care who will be leading your city who will be leading your state who will be going and representing  congress or in senate on a federal level and on a state level and who will be leading our country and this is a really important year for you to vote so if you're not a citizen right now become a citizen a s a p that's what you need to do if you are a citizen you need to register to vote so what america right now is doing voter registration and i think that's a very important to me because i knew staffer again i come from a large east african family in a large east african community it's very important for me that east africans specifically get out and vote there are going to be a lot of things in the upcoming elections they're going to affect our community and our community getting out becoming citizens registering to vote and voting can make a huge difference that's why this year it's connected so i registered to vote because i'm a citizen registered to vote get educated about what is going to be on the ballot who which candidate is the best candidate for you for your family for your community right or the issues that are going to affect you your family and your community and so that when your ballot comes in the mail you'll know you know when you'll know what to choose and the things to vote for that are going to help and not hurt you in your community so let me just say one more time that we w e r a r e one zero in the america and i can also own you can also call me up to six for three four six five four to get any of this information on april twenty eighth i want to invite everyone in the community to come to see tat ride should you come to see jack well everyone knows about international workers day it's a day all over the world that workers are celebrated and the work that they do to and all the work that they do is appreciated so see tad is a city where a lot of immigrants and refugees live lots of east africa and lots of different kinds of people live there the sea tac airport is a place where a lot of immigrants and refugees work well a lot of people that work at the sea tac airport or that work in industries that support people drive taxi cabs people that drive trucks people that drive shuttles people are working ten sessions stand out they're poor people to clean the planes a lot of those workers are immigrants and refugees and right now they're having a hard time a lot of their hours are getting they're getting caught they're on the flip side they're being forced to work lots and lots of hours their pay is getting  their benefits are getting cut in some cases they getting paid that much to begin with or they had no benefits and this is no way for people to make a good honest living lots of people come to america for a better life to work hard and to support their families and a lot of the immigrant and refugee workers that live in sea tac right now are unable to do that as hard as they work they're not being able to put bread on the table they're struggling to keep a roof over their family's heads and they're just struggling to make it so on dish this year on international workers day we want to put the focus on those workers those workers and sea tac a lot of them that look like me and that look like you that are east african that are latino asian are having a hard time and we want to go there and support those workers and we want to talk a little bit about what we can do to better support workers that live in ciudad so i hope you got all of that that's april twenty eighth they will be a big rally and march right on international boulevard to celebrate international workers day and to recognize the hard work that people are doing in sea tac so i think those are all the things that i have to talk about for information about anything i talked zero six four three four six five eight four and i thank you for taking the time to listen and i do hope that i see you either at citizenship day or at international workers day and see tag and i hope that you register and you vote this year educator and one of the things i do is i work for something called the rita coalition which is a nonprofit organization that partners with other people in the community to teach about diabetes to help reduce disparities related to diabetes because diabetes affects people of color more more so than any other groups and we also do so we teach about diabetes we do training we also do advocacy work and policy and systems work about changing people's access to healthy foods about where they can exercise teaching people how to advocate for themselves and so we do a lot of different things my role is with the diabetes mostly the curriculum and the training you know it seems like you do a lot of things now the diabetes well one of things we do is we work almost exclusively with communities of color and the new immigrant populations have been a new group arose one of our partners international community health services who are working with asian populations many who are well have been here for a long time so we're we're we know those kind of things there seem are works with the latino population exclusively and they work with both families who've been here a long time and the new immigrants and and then there's another one of our other partners who is a community center for multicultural health who in a work with the african american communities but are now expanding into working with east african communities and other african diabetes a lot is the difference between the two sure and there's a big difference and most people who have diabetes are going to have type two diabetes but type one diabetes is we used to call it juvenile diabetes but it usually occurs when somebody is very young and the pancreas that organ in our body that produces insulin that helps us use food in news in maintain our blood sugar levels it just fails it quits and it may be due to we're not even sure why entirely and there's so many unanswered things but when that happens we don't produce any insulin and that usually happens when you're little when type two diabetes occurs usually when you're in a daw and often when you're older though we're seeing it more and more news but that means that something else is going on in our body no longer uses insulin like it should and so we still have high blood sugars we have all those things that happen with type one but it's a totally different cause and that one is related to a lot of different  know because i know some cases that you know there's people that are really healthy and they go to the hospital to their doctor and they get bad lost with diabetes right why is that well first and foremost regardless of type two diabetes is genetic there's a genetic component and we don't understand all of it we know that there's lots of different genes going on that put it at risk for diabetes but something turns us genes on and you don't have to be overweight though many people are type two diabetes are overweight but not all you don't have even the amount of sugar and nothing to do with it but it seems to be related to physical activity how much body fat we have not just our weight but maybe how much by that we have it m think it's an especially when i see a new immigrant populations i think stress is a huge issue because it puts a lot of stress on the body but it's a combination of genetics and the environments we live in maybe the types of food we eat that are not see that are all the time especially on the internet cure diabetes reverse going to be here if once you have diabetes you have it can you control it and make it and have your blood sugar is perfectly normal certainly and i know a lot of people do that whether they take insulin or they take other kind of medications but they control it and you can live like someone with your blood sugar is normal but once you have diabetes you have diabetes forever so if you took the medication you've got to take it for ever things that you've got to treat it and it's not always medication there's other things you have to be active you've got to eat healthfully you've got to take medications you need them control your stress all those things are important the way right now as in nutrition as i'm sure you have an well and it's hard for everybody to eat healthfully great i'm a dietician but i you know i have i struggle like everybody and maybe i know better how to do it but i struggle like everybody but after have to think of the last time i was  restaurant which was excellent and we had a vegetarian meal just because i can't eat that we're not a vegetarian but it's good so we had and the only thing i think we i really did different than my friend who  would you would eat less of the enjoy probably in order to reduce the carbohydrates but you can eat very healthily across any culture and i guarantee it but you do learn that portions are more important how much you eat at one time is more important and we look at the risk factors again i think it's the same for the immigrant community who sells well it's a change in lifestyle or less activity maybe eating more calories maybe put it on a little bit of weight not a lie that maybe too much body fat might be there but i we look at a plate or you could almost look at a piece of engineer and you would say half of them should be green nonstarter colorful not just green orange red vegetables right half your plate should be that a quarter of your plate should be the meat or protein a lot but i think that's a good place to start i've seen other sort of instructions like half a piece of insurable when i tell people have they they don't they're not very happy with that so i say start with one but make sure that rest of that plate is full of lots of good vegetables lean a one time thing or what was your purpose of that well what we do as part of the reach program is that we realize that we we can deliver information about diabetes as well as the people who live within those communities so what we do is we train what we call champions health champions or diabetes champions people who are interested in learning more about diabetes in want to talk to people in their community about it so what we did down of the ether community center was trained about nine people who completed two days four days of training and something they didn't and what i gave them some basic information about diabetes they were able to see how i would teach classes and what topics we would do and then the the ideas that will go out and teach others in their community whether close small classes or large classes about what they learned in using our sort of curriculum now that's we did a two day training i did but that's not over because where now those champions are ready to teach i'll go back and i will help our support i'll do more training if they need it and in fact in may at the health fair all right i'm going to join them at their table because i'm an excited that's when i'll start talking to people about coming to diabetes classes oh yeah it's an ongoing support sounds wonderful now one of the things in this community is that as prevalent as these it's established disease is we do not talk about it i came up as a trainee yeah people really talked about there's this sort of silence about the disease and if you ask me that's what happens in other communities and it's really something that needs to be addressed first because  diabetes doesn't if somebody in your family has diabetes everybody has diabetes you have to talk about it we have to recognise it we have to so that we're not afraid to treat it and to get help for it and so we can support each other right  now the more people less such care some talk about something a little different now the more people stay here the more they have experience and knowledge about the us health care system right as well as well as western medicine  but some people still question the efficacy of prescribed medication for diabetes and even prefer to use traditional medicine what is your opinion on that well what my main feeling is talk to your doctor about it help lower blood sugars there are so i'm very interested in that kind of thing and so i don't tell people not to hide that what with in terms of diabetes you will need western medication more than likely at some point in your life with i b s so my best advice is tell your provider and if the doctor they go to the nurse to go to is unwilling to talk to about or find a different doctor but don't be be really honest about it because some medications could interfere with what you're doing and we want you to test for our blood to test our blood sugar levels and how important is that and how often to people take it well and that's really important because it does the blood sugar will stick to that  that molecule and what it can tell us is that it can give us sort of an estimated average of your blood sugars over the last two to three months so it should be done initially if someone just said no it's like every three months or so we could say hey how you doing and it's used for even for diagnosing now diabetes because it's a lot simpler and it can give you a range the only thing i would say it's very important but first people they need to check their blood sugars at home as well and so they have a day to day understand it onesies great and it should be done at least twice a year but it's not the whole story but it's certainly an important test for diabetes so what are things that are what are what are some important things for people with diabetes to do on a regular basis first of all i would say eat as healthfully as you can afford and that's an issue for people but we want to eat is fruits and vegetables whole not juice not all there nothing fancy fruits vegetables whole grains not as much protein perhaps or meat as merican sweet tons of meat you know don't adopt that try to keep that leads to healthy lean meats so a good balance of carbohydrates and  all those kind of things plus getting active some way exercising joaqun like you used to whatever it takes to do with your family by yourself with joining a gym and that's the kind of thing you like to do that may not be culturally appropriate depends on what people want to do but starting to be more active is one of the most important things and finding a way to manage stress reduce stress i really think those are the big three ok so what should we do now family have diabetes they can support help and be a resource for them the other thing is is that if they have diabetes in their family type two diabetes there are at risk probably because they share the genetics and family history with those folks so if my grandmother or my mother has diabetes the odds of me getting it are very high so i want to start preventing it now the other thing that's really worrisome we're seeing is that because of the lack of activity in our youth and and in with white americans especially overweight we're seeing kids twelve thirteen fourteen getting type two diabetes which is a disease we always thought of older folks so we the you do need to be concerned if you have diabetes in your family then everybody's at risk and if there's diabetes in our family then we need to help each other in our communities because it's a devastating disease that it's not well controlled and so we really really need everybody to be aware thank you for  time do you have any other messages that you would like to say to our viewers well first of all thank you for doing this and i love talking about diabetes and i could go on and on and on and i and any other time you ever want me to come back and talk about this specially for the you would love to but most of all i just as i've said before we have diabetes in the communities that means our all our communities have diabetes and if we're going to be healthy we need to work together to do something about prevention of this disease  about little bit about basics about diabetes and how it impacts youth as well as entire communities and basically this it was a great experience this information is going to go out onto the web for everyone to see  and that is the great effective way to reach people around health communication so if you have the opportunity and to come and want to get your message out about health communication other important issues and you community this is a great place to start that