Beach Fives

by Hani Ahmed and Makayla Miles

The Beach Fives is a program currently composed of six young adults at RBAC who provide capacity building support within the RBAC organization while also developing their leadership skills.

The Beach Fives, funded by King County’s Best Start for Kids initiative was started in 2018. It was designed to fill in the gap between RBAC programming like the Corner Greeters and the Farm Stand Fellows. You can read more about the Beach 5s program here.

We want to take the opportunity to introduce you to the young adults who work in the program. The Beach Fives team is currently composed of RBAC workers Bashan Ahmed, Hani Ahmed, Messiah Fagerholm, Mariam Bayo, Zion Thomas, and Makayla Miles. Gabbie Price was recently promoted as a specialist to support the Corner Greeter and community-wide PBIS program.

The “Beach 5ers’ ‘ support several RBAC programs and develop their skillsets of interest in support of those programs. For example, Zion, a photojournalist, is co-leading the work of the YATTA Rising program that is pursuing system change work in the Seattle Police Department. YATTA Rising will be starting workshops soo. Mariam serves as the quality control specialist for the Corner Greeters where she supports events running smoothly. She is also a part of the YATTA Rising planning team. Messiah is focused on Freedomnet, and he’s also responsible for RBAC videos, flyers, and has designed for the community wide PBIS program. He is currently working on a PBIS coloring book. Messiah also participates in the Corner Greeters planning activities. Bahsan is a data specialist, which has her coordinating all sign-in sheets and surveys for RBAC programs. If you’ve stopped by a Corner Greeter event, you have most likely seen her administer surveys. Bahsan enters all the data and analyzes it, and makes sure that the surveys get done with quality so that we know who is at our events. She also participates in Waste Free Communities. Hani is involved in the RBAC Credential Program that tracks the areas of work of RBAC program participants and certifies them for credentialing. She is also a part of the YATTA Rising planning and a team member of the Waste Free Communities team. Makayla, a journalist, is also involved in Freedomnet, and she makes sure that the RBAC website gets updated so the community can know what’s going on at RBAC. She also participates in Waste Free Communities and is the inspiration behind the RBAC Gardens.

So you can see the manner that RBAC deploys the Beach 5s within the organization. They have a wide and far-reaching effect, and are a very important part of RBAC. We want the public to know about this work, to spread the word and help in securing funding so that it can be sustained into the future. Just by being aware of this program, you can hopefully help more people in the Rainier Beach community know what Beach 5 is doing. By being aware of the awesome work our Beach 5ers are doing, you can help us grow!

Get involved: Come to the community healing space at Safeway on Fridays!

Take the Food Waste Pledge!

Check the RBAC and Freedomnet website for updates!