{"id":69714,"date":"2024-06-10T12:56:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/king-countys-mlk-distinguished-service-award-goes-to-kents-shamso-issak\/"},"modified":"2024-06-10T12:56:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T19:56:00","slug":"king-countys-mlk-distinguished-service-award-goes-to-kents-shamso-issak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/king-countys-mlk-distinguished-service-award-goes-to-kents-shamso-issak\/","title":{"rendered":"King County&#8217;s MLK distinguished service award goes to Kent&#8217;s Shamso Issak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shamso Issak, the founder and executive director of <a href=\"https:\/\/livingwellkent.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"link\" rel=\"noopener\">Living Well <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/livingwellkent.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"link\" rel=\"noopener\">Kent<\/a>, has received King County&rsquo;s Martin Luther King Jr. Medal of Distinguished Service award.<\/p>\n<p>King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, whose District 5 includes parts of Kent, on June 4 awarded Issak the honor. The annual award recognizes individuals whose work has answered the question asked by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. &ldquo;What are you doing for others?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Shamso Issak truly is the heart of South King County,&rdquo; Upthegrove said in a June 4 press release from his office. &ldquo;She has tirelessly advocated for the health and wellness of immigrants and refugees and has always done so with a smile on her face and a kind word for everyone around her. She faithfully represents the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr. and I am proud to call her my friend.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Issak has a diverse background that she applies to build collaborative, sustainable, and adaptable partnerships in low-income, immigrant and refugee communities to bring healthier living to everyone, according to the press release.<\/p>\n<p>Living Well Kent is a community-driven, nonprofit organization working to provide public spaces and initiatives that encourage healthier lifestyles and better living. Issak&rsquo;s work with Living Well includes early learning and language development to the community, food access through their greenhouse and farmer&rsquo;s market program and efforts to empower youth in their communities.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Thank you Councilmember Dave Upthegrove for the honor,&rdquo; Issak posted on the Living Well Facebook page. &ldquo;It has been a very rewarding journey working for the betterment of our community, and providing them access to our services. We thank you for your support.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>This marks the ninth year that council members have each selected someone from their district whose work embodies the spirit of King&rsquo;s question.<\/p>\n<p>Issak is the wife of Kent School Board member Awale Farah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Councilmember Dave Upthegrove selects Living Well Kent director for the honor <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":69715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-69714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69714"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=69714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}