At a glance
The Seattle Multilingual Collective (SMC) is a UW student-led initiative advancing linguistic equity for multilingual youth of… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2025-2026
- Large
- Awarded
- $19,776
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
The Seattle Multilingual Collective (SMC) is a UW student-led initiative advancing linguistic equity for multilingual youth of color. Building on a 2024-25 CSF-funded pilot, SMC engages youth, educators, and community partners in collaborative research and programming that centers youth voice and expertise. SMC supports multilingual transnational youth—particularly from African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American communities in Seattle—in reflecting on and sharing their language practices, while creating sustainable pathways for leadership and community impact. By positioning youth as knowledge producers, the program fosters lasting partnerships, replicable frameworks, and equitable educational practices, helping youth navigate and challenge language marginalization. Through this work, UW students gain skills in community-engaged research and equity-centered leadership, educators advance inclusive language practices, and youth co-researchers are empowered as advocates and leaders in their communities. Funds will be used to pay graduate and undergraduate students, youth participants, and a community educator/partner, as well as all materials needed to host the workshops.
Multilingual students bring rich linguistic diversity to U.S. schools, yet this diversity is not always reflected in language education policies, school curricula, and teaching practices. This is especially true for racialized multilingual students from immigrant and transnational communities.
Seattle is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in Washington State, home to growing transnational communities, including East African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American populations. In 2024-25, our team piloted the Seattle Multilingual Youth of Color & Educator Collective through a joint UW Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant and Campus Sustainability Fund award. The pilot engaged multilingual transnational youth, educators, student researchers, and community partners in collaborative research on language practices to advance linguistic equity for multilingual youth of color. Although the pilot welcomed all students, African transnational multilingual girls in South Seattle became the core co-researchers and quickly described the language circles as a supportive space for reflecting on their language practices. The pilot culminated in sustained relationships with youth, educators, and community partners, as well as pedagogical and theoretical insights for research and school-based practice that aligned with the collective's mission to advance linguistic equity.
Building on our pilot, the Seattle Multilingual Collective (SMC) expands our community-engaged work with three transformative goals: (1) expand engagement across metro-Seattle's diverse multilingual youth communities of color; (2) amplify youth voice in guiding program direction and development; and (3) create sustainable pathways for long-term engagement and meaningful impact. By positioning youth as knowledge producers and community leaders, our model ensures that programming is informed by participants' priorities and lived experiences. SMC’s vision extends beyond individual impact to create enduring partnerships, replicable frameworks, and sustainable momentum for linguistic equity that ripples across educational and community spaces and generations. In doing so, we create a communal, agentive response to the inevitable challenges that often accompany migration and language marginalization.
Our approach reflects the reciprocal, justice-centered principles foundational to our work: UW students develop essential skills in community-engaged research and equity-centered leadership, educators and community partners advance critical linguistic practices, and youth co-researchers are heard and seen as they shape programming through their expertise and build capacity as community advocates and leaders.
Dr. Lakeya Afolalu
Project lead
- lafolalu@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Faculty
- Affiliated groups
- College of Education
Sciatta Padmore
Team member
- sciatta@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 3 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- College of Education
The Seattle Multilingual Collective: Sustaining Community Partnerships for Linguistic Justice
In 2024–25, our team piloted the Seattle Multilingual Youth of Color & Educator Collective through a joint UW Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant and Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF) award. The project aimed to bring multilingual youth, educators, researchers, and community organizers together to reflect on school-based language practices to enhance linguistic justice for multilingual youth of color in the city. Although we invited all students to participate, African multilingual girls in South Seattle became the main participants. Within these weekly gatherings, we created what the girls called a “safe” space that was supportive, affirming, and mutual for us to reflect on our multilingual identities in our school and personal lives.
Building on the success of this pilot, the next phase, the Seattle Multilingual Collective (SMC), will continue this community-engaged, critical ethnographic research with three main goals: (1) increase participation by involving multilingual youth of color from various racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds (African, African American, Caribbean, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, and Latiné) (2) further centralize students’ desires and leadership in shaping the collective’s vision, research, and programs; and (3) bolster the initiative’s long-term sustainability and community impact. A major focus of this phase is students’ exploration of how race, language, and identity intersect in multilingual youth’s lives. By highlighting these experiences, the project ensures that sustainability efforts are rooted in students’ cultural and racial realities, promoting a more equitable and lasting model for community-based language and literacy education.
The SMC aims to cultivate long-term community-engaged partnerships between UW students, local educators, and youth by positioning language, culture, and community spaces as vital to sustainability. We envision sustainability as protecting the environment and preserving cultural, linguistic, and community ecosystems vital for current and future generations.
Background and Sustainable Impact
Seattle is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in Washington State. It is also home to transnational communities, including but not limited to East African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American communities. Yet multilingual youth of color often experience linguistic erasure and limited representation in school curricula (Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs Report, 2016; Pew Research Center, 2025).
The Seattle Multilingual Collective approaches sustainability through cultural ideology that centralizes the idea that sustaining languages, traditions, and relationships is integral to the health of people and place. By embedding student-informed programming in communities, SMC transforms educational spaces into sustainable ecosystems where multilingualism moves from the margins to the center of youth experience.
This project aligns with CSF’s commitment to equity and sustainability by:
- Bridging cultural ideology and physical environment: envisioning, transforming classrooms and libraries into linguistically inclusive learning spaces.
- Centering historically underrepresented communities: amplifying multilingual youth voices, particularly those of girls and young women.
- Fostering long-term vision and resilience: preparing educators, UW students, and community partners to sustain these practices beyond the funding period.
Project Approach
Building on our 2024–2025 pilot, we aim to sustain the student-driven, faculty-guided, community-engaged, critical ethnographic approach that centers linguistic justice. The project will begin with a feasibility and partnership-building phase, followed by an implementation phase that deepens collaboration, develops shared resources, and evaluates humanizing impact.
Goals for Phase I: Feasibility and Partnership Building (Winter 2026)
- Conduct focus groups with key stakeholders to identify linguistic, cultural, and sustainability priorities.
- Engage UW students in facilitation, research, and documentation roles to support program design and evaluation.
- Develop a framework for a Community Resource Map to connect neighborhood assets that promote linguistic and cultural sustainability.
- Begin developing curricular ideas and identifying tools for future program delivery.
- Create a comprehensive plan and budget for Phase II, including stakeholder feedback and community partner input.
- Share and circulate the program call with prospective incoming cohort members to expand outreach and participation.
Tentative Goals for Phase II: Implementation and Dissemination (Spring 2026 and beyond)
- Welcome new Seattle Multilingual Collective cohort members.
- Strengthen youth leadership by having founding cohort members serve as peer mentors and facilitators to provide guidance to new cohort members.
- Host circles in designated community spaces across the Seattle metropolitan area to increase programming accessibility for multilingual youth.
- Create a key resource from the project that connects youths’ learning, creativity, and community engagement through innovative, student-led approaches.
- Host a gathering that showcases cross-cohort collaboration, new partnerships, and creative work reflecting the development of linguistic and cultural sustainability practices. All activities will be collaboratively designed and piloted through The Seattle Multilingual Collective’s original framework for linguistic sustainability and justice.
Leadership and Student Involvement
The Seattle Multilingual Collective (SMC) is student-led and supported by faculty. It showcases a collaborative approach that highlights student leadership while maintaining strong faculty support and stability. While Dr. Afolalu oversees overall direction, coordination, and community partnership management, students play a vital role in shaping programming and implementation through research, reflection, facilitation, and design input.
- Project Lead: Dr. Lakeya Afolalu (Assistant Professor, Language, Literacy & Culture, College of Education).
- Project Co-Lead: Sciatta Padmore (Ph.D. Student, Culturally Sustaining Education, College of Education).
- Project Team: Master's and undergraduate students contribute to planning, circle facilitation, and co-created materials. Their insights help shape curricular content and community engagement strategies.
- Expanded Roles: 1-2 additional UW students will be hired as circle facilitators, outreach coordinators, and digital resource developers, ensuring that students continue to lead in day-to-day operations and project design.
- Mentorship Model: Under faculty guidance, graduate students mentor undergraduates in facilitation, reflective practice, and community partnership development. This structure supports peer leadership, collaboration, and sustainable capacity-building beyond the grant's life.
Education, Outreach & Transformation
Through circles, youth showcase, and digital narration, SMC advances a sustainability model rooted in cultural care and community well-being.
Educational and outreach components include:
- Facilitated circles to encourage dialogue across diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
- A gathering/showcase featuring youth-led sharings.
- An accessible hub that offers inclusive materials for educators and researchers.
The project fosters empathy, inclusion, and transformational change among students, educators, and institutions by redefining sustainability as caring for people and their languages.
Feasibility and Accountability
The project’s foundation is built on demonstrated success:
- The 2024–25 Seed Grant pilot achieved all deliverables and was commended for its evaluation and community engagement.
- Existing partnerships with community organizations, youth, local businesses, and educators in the metro-Seattle area ensure stable implementation.
- Fiscal management will remain under the UW College of Education for oversight and accountability.
- School-based integration and digital resources guarantee program longevity and access beyond the grant cycle.
The Seattle Multilingual Collective: Building Sustainable Community-Engaged Partnerships for Linguistic Justice redefines sustainability as sustaining people, languages, and stories. By embedding multilingual programming within community spaces, compensating UW students and youth participants for their labor, and equipping them with the materials needed to co-create change, this project models a justice-centered approach to sustainability that bridges UW and the communities it serves.
Lakeya Afolalu
Faculty
- lafolalu@uw.edu
- Affiliation and department
- College of Education
- Stakeholder approval form
Request amount and budget
Most project funds will support graduate and undergraduate student salaries and stipends, ensuring fair compensation for their leadership, facilitation, and coordination roles. Additional funds will cover honoraria for middle and high school participants and essential curricular and material needs such as art supplies, books, and sustainable digital tools necessary for implementing the Multilingual Identity and Well-Being Circles. A strategic portion of the budget will be dedicated to developing a comprehensive Digital Multilingual Resource Hub and organizing a culminating Multilingual Gathering and Showcase. These events and the digital resource hub platform will facilitate sharing youth-created curricula and artifacts with the broader Seattle community and globally, promoting accessible community engagement.
How the project will react to funding reductions
- A 10% reduction would eliminate honoraria for community educators who have already agreed to participate in-kind, if needed. Core programming, youth honoraria, and essential materials would be maintained.
- A 20% reduction would reduce the number of paid UW students and/or their hours, while programming would continue with a streamlined staffing model focused on direct youth engagement.
- In the event of a 50% reduction, the organization would limit the number of cohorts served and prioritize one primary programming cycle. Additionally, student hours and dissemination activities would be significantly reduced, yet commitments to youth leadership and community-based programming would remain intact.
Plans for financial longevity
Following the initial investment, we will actively pursue additional funding through university-based grants, private foundations, and community-aligned funding sources to ensure the Seattle Multilingual Collective’s financial sustainability and growth. Establishing ongoing relationships with community partners will support in-kind contributions, reducing long-term operational costs. All curricular materials, youth-created artifacts, and shared resources developed through our project will be archived in UW-supported digital repositories and made available under Creative Commons licenses, ensuring continued public access beyond the funding period. Program equipment, such as tablets and documentation tools, will remain the program's property and be reused in future cohorts, further promoting sustainability. SMC employs a leadership approach designed to extend program impact while building long-term sustainability. Additionally, integrating SMC materials and practices into university coursework and community-engaged learning opportunities will create pathways for future UW students to continue the work. Collectively, these strategies establish a durable foundation for our project’s long-term financial viability and lasting impact.
Goals for Phase I: Feasibility and Partnership Building (Winter 2026)
- Conduct focus groups with youth, families, educators, and community members to identify linguistic, cultural, and sustainability priorities.
- Employ UW undergraduate and graduate students as paid facilitators, researchers, and documentation leads to support program design and evaluation.
- Develop a Community Resource Map to connect neighborhood assets that promote linguistic and cultural sustainability.
- Plan curricular materials and identify tools needed for program delivery; founding cohort members will be invited to participate in this planning process.
- Create a comprehensive plan and budget for Phase II, including stakeholder feedback and community partner input.
- Share and circulate the program call with prospective incoming cohort members to expand outreach and participation.
Tentative Goals for Phase II: Implementation and Dissemination (Spring 2026 and beyond)
- Welcome new Seattle Multilingual Collective cohort members.
- Strengthen youth leadership by having founding cohort members serve as peer mentors and facilitators to guide new cohort members.
- Host circles in designated community spaces across the Seattle metropolitan area to increase programming accessibility for multilingual youth.
- Create a key resource from the project that connects youths’ learning, creativity, and community engagement through innovative, student-led approaches.
- Host a gathering that showcases cross-cohort collaboration, new partnerships, and creative work reflecting the development of linguistic and cultural sustainability practices.
Plans for long-term project management
The Seattle Multilingual Collective is structured as a student-centered leadership model designed to ensure continuity beyond any single cohort through overlapping roles, mentorship, and documented practices.
Distributed Leadership: Graduate and undergraduate students take on differentiated roles in program coordination and community engagement. This approach distributes knowledge across multiple levels rather than concentrating it in any single person. Student leadership cohorts overlap to ensure knowledge transfer, with returning students supporting the onboarding of incoming leaders.
Documentation and Reflection: Student leaders develop resources that support program continuity. Structured reflection informs leadership development and program refinement, allowing incoming leaders to step into roles with clarity.
Faculty and Community Anchoring: Faculty leadership provides structural stability and institutional memory, maintaining relationships with long-term community partners as student leadership transitions. The faculty also ensures continuity in grant administration, mentoring, and student leadership, and facilitates university connections, allowing student leadership to flourish while maintaining programmatic stability.
Community partnerships with metro-Seattle educators and organizations provide additional continuity, support planning and reflection, and facilitate onboarding of new student leaders.
Through this layered structure, SMC sustains its mission and impact beyond the tenure of any individual student leader.
Problem statement
The Seattle Multilingual Collective addresses two intersecting sustainability needs:
- The marginalization of multilingual youth of color within educational sustainability efforts, particularly those related to language, culture, and identity.
- The opportunity to develop enduring, community-engaged pathways at UW that sustain linguistic, cultural, and relational ecosystems alongside environmental sustainability goals.
Seattle is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in Washington State, shaped by African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, and Latiné transnational communities. Yet multilingual youth of color frequently experience linguistic erasure in schools, where their languages and cultural knowledge are underrepresented or treated as deficits rather than assets. These conditions undermine educational equity and weaken the long-term sustainability of cultural and community systems that support youth well-being, belonging, and civic engagement.
The University of Washington has made significant investments in sustainability, particularly in environmental and infrastructure areas. The Seattle Multilingual Collective builds on this foundation by foregrounding language, race, migration, and youth identity as essential dimensions of sustainability. We position the lived experiences and perspectives of multilingual youth, especially immigrant and transnational youth, to inform and drive practice.
Our 2024–2025 pilot of the Seattle Multilingual Youth of Color & Educator Collective, supported by CSF and the UW Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant, demonstrated our program's transformative potential by laying the groundwork for a justice-centered approach that recognizes linguistic and cultural continuity as essential to long-term community linguistic sustenance.
Problem context
The Seattle Multilingual Collective complements and extends the University of Washington's sustainability, equity, and community-engaged initiatives. UW hosts robust programs in environmental sustainability, student leadership, and community partnerships. SMC extends this work by centering linguistic equity and cultural sustainability with youth at the core.
SMC builds on established partnerships with multilingual youth, educators, and community organizations across metro-Seattle and aligns with CSF's emphasis on equity, long-term impact, and systems-level change. We address a critical need to centralize the voices, perspectives, and lived experiences of multilingual youth, particularly immigrant and transnational.
Our project strengthens UW's sustainability ecosystem by:
- Developing practical, replicable, youth-centered frameworks that integrate linguistic equity into sustainability practice.
- Providing undergraduate and graduate students with paid leadership positions that enhance skills in community-engaged research, facilitation, and program design.
- Supporting middle and high school youth through honoraria, mentorship, and leadership pathways that extend across cohorts.
- Creating shared materials and resources that can be adapted beyond the funding period.
In this way, SMC strengthens collective action across UW and community spaces while demonstrating how sustainability can be reimagined through language, belonging, and youth leadership.
Measure the impacts
| Impact / goal | Metric(s) of success | UW stakeholders impacted |
|---|---|---|
| Cultivate interdisciplinary, justice-centered leadership among UW students through sustained community-engaged practice. | Engage 4 UW students as paid facilitators, researchers, and coordinators from at least two academic units. Over 80% of students report improved skills in community-engaged research, facilitation, and equity-centered leadership at end-of-cycle. | Undergraduate, Graduate |
| Build enduring UW–community partnerships that engage youth, educators, and community partners in collaborative inquiry into language, identity, race, and migration in community spaces. | Engage multilingual middle- and high-school youth across two cohorts as paid participants; partner with at least two community organizations; host two community gatherings with 60–80 attendees. | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni |
| Advance campus sustainability by centering cultural continuity, care, and long-term community engagement. | Develop shared resources that support broader educational use; facilitate 3 structured reflection sessions to inform program refinement and sustainability planning. | Undergraduate, Graduate, Alumni |
Education and outreach goals
The Seattle Multilingual Collective advances education and outreach by creating sustained programming in which multilingual youth, UW students, educators, and community partners collaborate on language, identity, and race. Our project's primary educational goal is to position multilingual youth as knowledge producers whose lived experiences inform culturally sustaining practices, while preparing UW students for justice-centered, community-based work.
Programming and Engagement
Education unfolds through community-based programming hosted in accessible spaces across metro-Seattle. Youth participants are compensated for their participation, recognizing their labor and expertise as central to SMC's success.
Campus and Community Outreach
Our project will be publicized through:
- UW Sustainability networks and CSF communication channels
- University courses, departmental listservs, and student organization partnerships
- Community partnerships with metro-Seattle schools, libraries, and youth-serving organizations
- Strategic outreach highlighting youth leadership and project outcomes
Education and outreach are embedded in how we work. We regularly convene gatherings that bring together youth, families, educators, UW students, and partners, which creates opportunities to share youth-created work and strengthen UW–community relationships.
Long-term Educational Impact
By centering youth voice, paying all participants, and creating shared resources, our project ensures that education and outreach are ethical, ongoing processes connecting youth learning, community engagement, and institutional transformation. Materials will support continued use in educational and community settings, extending SMC's reach.
Student involvement
Student involvement is foundational to the Seattle Multilingual Collective and is intentionally structured to support professional development, leadership, and mentorship at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. UW students are engaged as paid collaborators in facilitation, research, and program development, ensuring equitable compensation while building transferable skills valued in education, research, and community engagement careers.
Graduate Student Leadership
Graduate students (PhD and Master's level) serve in coordination and research roles, supporting program design, facilitation, analysis, and mentorship. Under faculty guidance, they help develop programming, lead reflective practices, and maintain community partnerships. These roles provide applied experience in community-engaged research, qualitative methods, and justice-centered program design; competencies increasingly central to academic and professional pathways in education, social science, and public scholarship.
Undergraduate Student Engagement
Undergraduate students participate as facilitators, outreach coordinators, and documentation leads. They support programming implementation, assist with materials development, contribute to outreach efforts, and help build resources. Through this work, undergraduates gain hands-on experience in facilitation, community partnership, and collaborative research while being mentored by graduate students and faculty.
Mentorship Model
SMC employs a mentorship model that builds leadership capacity and ensures knowledge transfer across cohorts. This approach creates continuity beyond a single grant cycle. Student roles are compensated through the project budget, which prioritizes paid student labor as a core investment in equity and sustainability.
Professional Development Outcomes
Through paid positions and structured mentorship, students develop competencies in community-engaged research, facilitation, program coordination, and equity-centered leadership. These experiences prepare students for careers in education, research, nonprofit leadership, policy, and community development while positioning UW as a leader in student-centered, community-engaged sustainability work.
Pathways for Continued Engagement
SMC creates pathways for ongoing student involvement, ensuring engagement can continue as opportunities emerge.