The International Examiner is proud to honor Nurhaliza Mohamath with a Community Voice Award (CVA)—specifically, the Tatsuo Nakata Youth Award for her exceptional leadership as a young person. Please join us in-person, on October 23, 2025, to celebrate her and other community leaders.
As Food Justice and Youth Program Manager at Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC), Nurhaliza Mohamath works with youth to support local farmers through the Seeds of Change (SOC) Network, in addition to wearing other hats like grant writing, budgeting, helping coordinate facility improvements, and much more.
When I caught up with Mohamath to talk about her work, I found it impossible not to be inspired by her vision of building a food hub in Rainier Beach. As we talked, all kinds of lightbulbs were going off for me as I realized: food is never just food. It’s politics, economics, faith, intergenerational sharing, and a key component of climate justice. I got a little peek into how she holds both the big and small pieces of local and global food justice together in relation to Rainier Beach, and before long, I was reflecting on my own connections to food history, family recipes, and tying that to our current moment.
“I feel really passionate and grateful that I get to work with young people and expose them to what food justice really means,” Mohamath said. “From working on the farms with them to organizing town halls with them, seeing how they support our Black and Brown farmers and advocate for them with other youth-led groups to see them connect with other young leaders.”
“I think how she’s become such a leader is that she’s just herself,” said Cly Sampson, Farmer Care Coordinator at RBAC. “She’s so strong in her faith… She has integrity, and she knows who she is and he knows where she comes from. That strong sense of self has inspired so many other people around her to rise up to the occasion.”
At RBAC, Mohamath works with young adults transitioning to adulthood (or “YATTAS”), by connecting them to local BIPOC farmers through SOC, a network that takes a holistic approach to farmer wellness. Youth are brought out to BIPOC-owned farms—about 30 of them in mainly South King County, but also in Woodinville, Carnation, and Enumclaw—to work alongside farmers and provide other support. RBAC buys food directly from these farmers, and YATTAS receive, prepare, package, and distribute the food for free at the Rainier Beach Food Hub and Farm Stand.
Mohamath also brings YATTAS to the table for project management and other high-level discussions. As someone used to being “the youngest one in these kinds of spaces,” she makes it a point to “bring my young people … for me, these young people have to have access and know these spaces, and know that this is their work that’s being celebrated in these high level spaces.”
The documentary, Seeds of Change, is a culmination of SOC’s farmer interviews. It debuted this March and has screened at events like this year’s Black Nerd Fest at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. When youth amplify and support farmer narratives, the effect goes beyond just food or climate justice; it becomes a cultural movement, Mohamath said. Aligned with that movement, SOC is collaborating with Paradice Avenue Souf on a future line of streetwear.
“We’re working with them on some merch and some clothing,” said Mohamath. “It’s for farmers, it’s for our youth, for that cultural aspect of the working class to reclaim that kind of work, that celebration of labor. Farmers … deserve to be a focal point of fashion, of culture.”
Making food justice a cultural movement is integral to the long-term vision of the Rainier Beach Food Innovation District, a concept cultivated by RBAC cofounders David Sauvion and Gregory Davis, to center fresh food in an area known to suffer from “racism [and] food apartheid.”
“There is so much opportunity for it to be a local food economy,” Mohamath explained. “There was this visual sketch that I saw when I was first learning about RBAC, and it [showed] a farmers market, a community cafe, entrepreneurship hub, and child care. I was like, ‘I want it to be more like that!’”
“I always admire how big Nurhaliza thinks,” said Sampson. “Every community should have an RBAC, right? Every community should have a food hub. I think we’re just trying to be an example to a lot of other communities that this is what everyone should deserve … a place where they know where they can get fresh food, where they know who their farmers are.”
Mohamath is quick to place herself in the context of her family and the greater Cham refugee community in Seattle. Chams are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia who trace their ancestry back to the ancient Kingdom of Champa. Many Cham refugees came to the U.S. during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge genocide. Mohamath’s connection to food and food justice began before she was born.
“My work is also spiritual work,” she said. “It’s bigger-than-me work. It’s before-me and after-me work.”
Mohamath was born in Saigon and moved to Seattle when she was two years old. From the get-go, she was immersed in her family’s restaurants and kitchens. Her mother, Chef Salima of Skyway restaurant Salima Specialties, is “one of the pioneers of our Cham community,” Mohamath said. “My mom [has] a little blueprint that has passed on what it means to feed people to me, or, like, ‘What is the meaning of food and the culture?’ And my mom is one of the most talented chefs in our community.”
A project years in the making, Mohamath is in the final stages of writing a book, My Cham Tongue: A Taste of An Ancient Kingdom Through Family Recipes, featuring recipes from the matriarchs in her Cham community. “It’s not just a cookbook. It’s a history book—a reclaiming history book,” Mohamath specified, noting the history of war, genocide, and diaspora of the Chams, but also the celebration of Cham food and culture.
“I think once you get to a certain point where you know your purpose and what you know you need to do for the collective and for liberation, it’s bigger. It becomes bigger than the trauma of the past generations,” she said.
Honing this generations-long vision comes partly from Mohamath’s work with SOC. “Whatever’s happening with our purpose, it goes longer. It’s like reaching back in time … You feel so connected … something primitive and instinctive switches on outside and in the land,” she said. “[It’s] remembering deeper than you would even think.”
