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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