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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Ethiopian Community Of Seattle Center Extends Its Services To Outer Reaches Of The City, And Beyond

Siblings Mesfin Ayele and Martha Seyoum get ready for the dinner rush at their Jebana Cafe on Saturday April 27, 2024. Just next door, they have a market where they sell ingredients for making authentic Ethiopian food (Photo by Charley Davison).

By Charley Davison, The Seattle Medium

As gentrification intensified throughout the past decade in the Rainier Beach neighborhood in Seattle, the large Ethiopian community began to find new areas for adequate housing, but the established cultural community center could not move.

The organization, Ethiopian Community in Seattle built an affordable housing unit just above their headquarters at 8323 Rainier Ave. South, with 89 units in 2023 for low income seniors, but maintaining the entire community presence that makes the area culturally unique was unrealistic. Instead, as Ethiopian people spread out to the outskirts of the SeaTac and Snohomish county areas, ECS has started a consistent communication network with members of their community who live farther away.

While the community center’s website had information and resources to help small businesses and other community members, outreach beyond the physical space of their building has become increasingly important for ECS in the past five years.

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“We serve people where they are,” said Executive Director Sophia Benalfew. “It started when COVID struck and we could no longer host community meetings here in the center.” 

Instead, the leadership team began emailing health tips and hosting virtual English lessons for Ethiopians in Seattle. Now, the email list and virtual services allow Benalfew and other community leaders to cast a wide net of support across the entire metropolitan area.

Abraham Asfaw was appointed April 8, 2024 as the small business capital readiness project coordinator, but in the few weeks he’s been involved with the nonprofit his focus has been on offering services to small businesses. He has over 300 businesses in his database of contacts, and the center is extending that outreach.

The Seattle Office of Economic Development works with ECS to help Ethiopian businesses secure loans and navigate government processes. According to Asfaw, this consulting is completely funded by the city of Seattle to support underserved communities in coordination with other nonprofits. 

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“In order for these small businesses to have access to capital, they need to understand the comprehensive list of documents for banks,” said Asfaw. He regularly circulates information in both English and Amharic that details the steps to improving a small business .

Ghezahegn Abebe is the owner of Enat Ethiopian Restaurant, an established traditional eatery in Northgate that opened in 1997. When his family moved to the neighborhood over two decades ago, they were the only East African business. He said the isolation didn’t have too many negative effects on him and his family because the customers and neighbors were so friendly. Now, there’s plenty of East African restaurants, markets, and other businesses all around the Northgate and Lake City neighborhoods.

“For us, no matter who is nearby, we always care about maintaining authenticity and culture as a family business,” said Abebe.

Down the road, Jebana Cafe has been operating for just over a decade. The restaurant is run by siblings Mesfin Ayele and Martha Seyoum with a focus on traditional Ethiopian coffee and cuisine.

“When we started this business a decade ago ECS was very small so we didn’t have access to this kind of help, and now I see all this progress and it is good news for a lot of people,” said Ayele. He praised ECS for breaking down the language barrier for ambitious small businesses who need to fill out paperwork.

Ayele was excited when he received emails and phone calls from ECS, which he later learned went to many different business owners. He is currently working with Asfaw and other members of ECS to import large amounts of coffee beans from Ethiopia, which will allow him to expand his business. 

“When they called me I told them ‘I’m glad you called me,’” said Ayele, “I called you many times.”

Further north, in Lynnwood, Seife Biru is excited to work with ECS to access capital for his three month old grocery store, Fiker Market. 

“There are a lot of Ethiopians here in Lynwood, but we definitely don’t have the community like they do down there,” said Biru. He said many Ethiopian families in his area still attend churches and events in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. 

He wasn’t ready to have his photograph taken in his business. Instead, he wants his store to be perfect aesthetically before introducing it to the public. Biru hopes his new market can become a successful business that continues to cultivate an appreciation for Ethiopian food culture.

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