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PW: I know that around 1997, our friend Roy Mita comes back into the picture with AUSD by helping with another group of supporters to start something called the Multicultural Center?

MY: He and two members of our church, Sharon Bayle and George Chin, went to a workshop and cast a vision for us creating a multicultural center where there could be different groups coming together in one space to work together and (in) coalition together, but also creating a stronger voice for a multicultural community. And so he brought that to our community development committee, and I think there was a committee that was formed where we had community members Vicky Smith, Jeanne Nader, Dave McIntyre was from the Court Street Methodist Church, and then from our church, Sharon and George, and then Lynette Lee had become a member of our church by that time, and she became very prominent in that project because she was the executive director of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, which was the nonprofit housing organization, and well-known. And Lynette was well-known nationally as well. And so we were blessed to have her in the congregation in leading this community development effort. And there, EBALDC became the nonprofit fiscal sponsor for that project. And initially the group found an office space and then another space to operate out of. Unfortunately, the budgeting was really a challenge for the group, and they ended up getting space with the school district in partnership, and Niel was the one that kind of helped to negotiate that with the district. And they had a space out at one of the former school sites to operate out of over a period of time. But I think Roy moved on once we got that started, and he felt it was just kind of time to move on to some other things, and he felt other people could be more instrumental in helping to get that done. And so that's where we brought in Juan Saavedra who was the part-time pastor of the Court Street Methodist Church and kind of had experience in this kind of work, and so he took the lead in the development work for that particular project.

PW: So to clarify, the multicultural center was not necessarily with the school district, it was an initiative that was for the entire city of Alameda?

MY: Yeah. It was more of a community project, but with Niel creating kind of a partnership with the district, they ended up creating a space for the project at a school district site. And eventually, though, that went dormant as well, and particularly, I think, to the time when Niel got sick and then eventually passed away, they had to close their doors because their organization kind of just lacked the capacity to sustain itself.

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