Each month, Thurston Community Media (TCMedia)’s Mission Nonprofit connects with local organizations and agencies that positively impact our communities. In June 2024, Mission Nonprofit host Deborah Vinsel sat down with Khurshida Begum, founder of the ASHHO Cultural Community Center in Tumwater.
ASHHO – pronounced “aa-show” according to their website – means to invite or call someone to come join in Bengali. This name aptly describes their mission, which is to advocate for those who often cannot, including survivors, people of color, the under-served or under-resourced and other marginalized groups; to serve with kindness, compassion and professional services; honor humanity; and organize for positive change through community resources, gatherings, trainings and events.
Khurshida Begum wanted a place where minorities and underrepresented people could get job training and community support while uniting through events. ASHHO is the result of 16 years of hard work and dedication. “We wanted to talk about hidden community issues, silent community issues like domestic violence, like human trafficking,” shares Khurshida, who started it with her niece. “I’ve had that long dream of having a place where people belong and particularly people that are from marginalized communities, people that are from black and brown, refugee, immigrant, outsiders – like where do we go? Where do we belong, especially in Washington State, so it was a long dream of mine.”
They started out in the Lacey Community Center. Then during the Pandemic, they started donating food out of their space in Tumwater, which was formerly Pellegrino’s Italian Kitchen. “They really mentored me,” Khurshida says about the Pellegrinos, “Great, kind, very generous people.” ASHHO did gave over 8,400 hot meals to the community. “I don’t come from restaurant work, I don’t come from catering work, I never went to a chef School and I just knew that I needed to feed people because soup kitchens, everything, was closed and that kind of led me to cooking a lot.”
Towards the end of the pandemic, she realized there wasn’t a lot of funding for the job training and cultural community center aspect of ASHHO, so she knew they need to make their own funding. Khurshida did this through her catering and event rental business that operates out of their space. The for-profit supports her nonprofit work.
“We can make money, we can make profit and do really good work, impactful work, philanthropy work,” she says.
ASHHO Programs and Services
Their programs and services are evolving pieces as they continue to grow and fulfill Khurshida’s dream. Pieces include mental health support for the community, they did a program with Dr. Bree; their Soul Café, to give people who have barriers to employment work; annual events like Juneteenth and Bengali night that bring the community together; and more. For 2025 their focus is on their culinary and hospitality job training program for people with barriers to employment. It will give them job skills and a new path to employment.
For more information, watch the full video above or visit the ASHHO Cultural Community Center website.
You can watch Mission Nonprofit on channel 22 on Sundays at 3:30 p.m., Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m., Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays at 10 a.m. You can also watch on TCMedia website, Video On-Demand or our Roku channel. To learn more about what TCMedia does, visit the Thurston Community Media YouTube channel or the TC Media website and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
