SALAAM CULTURAL CENTER

Since its founding in 1990, SCM has been serving the local refugee community, organizing volunteer trips to the Middle East, sending a shipping container of medical supplies and clothing for distribution to refugee camps in Jordan each year, promoting local MENA artists and businesses, and educating the wider Washington community about the Middle East and North Africa through workshops and cultural events. Our support includes cultural events such as the Seattle Arab Festival; rent support, clothing and food for refugee families resettled in Washington; and a trauma center for Syrian children and vocational training centers for Syrian women in Jordan. This year, we will open a clinic and shelter for mothers and children on the island of Samos in Greece and are also in the process of founding a museum of MENA culture and history here in Seattle.

SCM provides support to the MENA community by:

-Providing donations and support to MENA refugees in refugee camps across the region
-Helping asylum seekers and immigrants safely resettle in the United States
-Arranging donations of furniture for newly arrived families to settle in their new homes, organizing fundraisers to pay for school supplies, or collecting Winter clothing to donate to them. Since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, SCM has actively advocated for refugees to be resettled in Washington and succeeded in welcoming families from Syria as well as members of persecuted populations such as members of the Middle Eastern LGBTQ community.
-Organizing cultural events and workshops to educate the wider Washington community about MENA culture
-Providing intercultural education, cultural sensitivity training and resources to help coordinate between the community, govrnment and law enforcement.
-Founding a MENA Museum in Seattle which documents the history of the community here in the Pacific North West and provides educational resources

The organization's founder, Rita Zawaideh has been an advocate and changemaker for the Middle Eastern and North African community of Washington for decades. She is considered a community leader for her dedication to helping the people of the Middle East and North Africa both in their homelands, as refugees and as immigrants to the United States. She is a local business owner and a philanthropist, but she has also played a role advocating for and actively supporting community members through SCM Medical Missions, a non-profit she founded in 1990 to send medical supplies to refugees in the Middle East and through the Arab American Community Coalition, which she helped organize after September 11th 2001 to serve as a resource to help law enforcement and the community better coordinate, communicate and respect one another. We rely on a network of organizations, business, volunteers and non-profits in the Pacific Northwest and internationally to help us raise money, serve the MENA community and fundraise.

In 1990, SCM's founder, Rita Zawaideh helped organize the first Seattle Arab Festival and brought 8 Middle Eastern directors to Seattle to show their films and discuss them. This led to the creation of Arab Film Distribution (AFD), which Rita founded to provide an outlet for Middle Eastern and North African filmmakers to showcase their work in the US and to raise awareness of Arab culture and history outside of the politicized news cycle. SCM has organized volunteer trips and donation drives for refugees in the Middle East and North Africa since the 1980s. The majority of SCM’s staff members and volunteers are MENA immigrants, refugees and members of the MENA community.

SCM was among the first organizations that went into in Lesbos, Greece at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. Their women and children's shelter and clinic on the island of Samos will be our second project in Greece. In 2015, they sent multiple teams of volunteers to the island of Lesbos during the height of the crisis.

In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, SCM's founder led the formation of the AACC - the Arab American Community Coalition, which conducted cultural sensitivity training for local law enforcement and served as a resource to help police and the community better communicate and respect one another. The AACC created a hotline staffed with Arabic speakers to ensure their civil rights were protected. In the leadup to the Iraq War, prior to 2003, Rita helped the Arab community mobilize against the war and sponsored visits to Baghdad by members of congress. During the war, SCM helped send much-needed medical supplies into Baghdad and coordinate with the Jordanian Army to deliver them to families in parts of Iraq where other international organizations were unable to reach civilians.

SCM has also helped bring medical supplies into Idlib, in Syria, since the start of the war in 2011.