Announcing 11 Awardees for Best Starts Capital Priority 1: New Construction or Renovation of Community and Recreational Centers    

Published October 21, 2024

When community spaces serve and align with the community’s needs, children and families can access quality programs and supports to be happy, healthy, and safe. 

Through Best Starts Capital Program Priority 1 request for proposals, we are excited to partner in the construction and renovation of community centers and recreational centers serving low-income, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), immigrant and refugee, LGBTQ, disabled and foster children and families in King County, particularly those in rural areas or areas without access to similar facilities.  

We’re excited to announce the 11 awardees for our Best Starts Capital RFP!   

African Community Housing & Development 

Bellevue Boys & Girls Club 

Bellwether Housing 

Chief Seattle Club 

Des Moines Pool Metropolitan Park District 

Girl Scouts of Western Washington 

Khmer Community of Seattle-King County 

Martin Luther King Jr. Family, Arts, Mentoring, and Enrichment Community Center 

The Arc of King County 

Tubman Center for Health & Freedom  

Vashon Maury Community Food Bank 

A look at the work ahead  

Read about the 11 construction and renovation projects happening soon! 

Two faces, one with a mask, looking into a camera.

Measuring Indigenous identities: learnings from Best Starts’ evaluation team

The exclusion and erasure of Indigenous people in data is rooted in colonial research practices that are deeply embedded in Western systems of data. Indigenous people have always a collected, analyzed, and shared data in their own ways that have been ignored and discounted by many “mainstream” data projects. This underscores the need to rethink race and ethnicity measures with Indigenous people, organizations, and Native nations.

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