WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.) secured $673,000 in the 2022 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill for World Relief Seattle’s Entrepreneurship Incubation Hub: Teaching & Commercial Kitchen located in Kent, Washington.

“World Relief Seattle has been welcoming our newest neighbors from immigrant and refugee backgrounds, for the past 40 years,” said Chitra Hanstad, World Relief Seattle Executive Director. “We have long wondered how we can support our communities beyond the first few months of the resettlement period. In conversations with our community and the help of Adam Smith's office, we hope to open a commercial/teaching kitchen. We will pair this with an Immigrant Entrepreneurship Academy which will give our community economic freedom and bolster the State's economy with new jobs!"

This funding will help World Relief Seattle develop a teaching and commercial kitchen that will be a 1,215 sq. ft. multi-impact community space serving Washington’s King County refugee and immigrant community. This space will be used as an entrepreneurship and small business incubation hub to launch and promote local businesses, particularly food-based businesses, and train refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs through an Entrepreneurship Academy hosted in the space.

The project will promote entrepreneurship and successful small business ownership within historically underserved communities; advance community based economic empowerment through promoting food related businesses and income-generating initiatives; and simultaneously increase food security and sovereignty for refugee and immigrant communities.

In April, Congressman Smith submitted World Relief Seattle’s project as one of his ten Community Project Funding requests to the House Appropriations Committee. The rest of the Community Project Funding requests will be announced in July.

Click here for more information about this project and here for information about other Community Project Funding requests submitted by Congressman Smith.

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SEATTLE, WA – Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.) released the following statement in honor of Juneteenth after speaking at the Northwest African American Museum’s (NAAM) Juneteenth Jamboree.

“On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger led Union soldiers led into Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War had ended and that the people held in slavery there were free – but it was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation legally abolishing slavery in the United States.

“156 years later, Congress has recognized the long-standing tradition among Black Americans to memorialize the end of slavery by establishing Juneteenth National Independence Day as a federal holiday. This day marks one of the most important moments in our country's history. It was the starting point on a path to equal justice under the law and equitable opportunity for all in America, that continues even today.

“This Juneteenth arrives at a time when the national conversation on police brutality, criminal justice, health care and social services access, infrastructure investment, and good governance acknowledges the reality of systemic racism, which disproportionately places the heaviest burdens and the harshest penalties on Black people. Change is long overdue. Commemoration alone is not enough to rid the country of the existing legacies of slavery especially in light of unprecedented attacks on the right to vote and recognition of our country’s history of slavery in state legislatures across the country.

“I am proud and grateful to join in celebrating Juneteenth with my friend LaNesha DeBardelaben, the Northwest African American Museum, Rec'N The Streets, and many others on a day that symbolizes the beginning of freedom for so many Black Americans. I recommit to the work still ahead of us – I remain committed to doing everything in my power to fight hate and racism and I will not stop until every American has equal opportunities to succeed."

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