Culturingua Builds Opportunity in San Antonio

On a weekday afternoon in February, Ali Baba International Food Market in Northwest San Antonio was abuzz with shoppers stocking up on Ramadan staples like dates and lentils, while others ran in quickly for freshly baked pita bread or South Asian noodles. With all the enticing attractions, it would have been relatively easy to miss the small plaque at the front door noting the market and surrounding plaza’s historic role as a “center for other culinary destinations and shops with the goal of bringing various cultures together.” 

When visiting the neighborhood with Culturingua co-founders Nadia Mavrakis and Nader Mehdawi, the significance of this and other historical plaques marking cornerstones of the city’s Silk Road District is illuminated. Culturingua was one of the leading champions that promoted the city’s official designation of this community as San Antonio’s fourth Cultural Heritage District in late 2024. Mavrakis describes the designation as generating a “tremendous sense of pride and unity” among the region’s Filipino, Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Arab, and African communities, who now see themselves as part of a shared story. 

Part of the Rural Immigrant Success Exchange (RISE) network, convened by Jobs for the Future (JFF), with support from the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and Ascendium Education, Culturingua conducts entrepreneurship training to help community members launch and scale small businesses, often drawing on the expertise they bring from their home countries. For its RISE initiative, Culturingua developed a training pathway in the animal husbandry industry in the rural outskirts of San Antonio, serving primarily Afghan participants from agrarian communities. Culturingua exemplifies the community-based work of building strong regional economies—work that is central to JFF’s commitment to breaking down barriers to economic advancement and reimagining what’s possible.  

The Power of Place

San Antonio has long had a strong Middle Eastern community and has played a leading role in refugee resettlement, receiving over 3,800 Afghan refugees after the withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021. While refugees and immigrants have long found community in the Northwest part of the city, new arrivals still face challenges in realizing long-term economic advancement. At the local level, newcomers are disproportionately represented in the area’s public housing and apartment complexes with substandard conditions.  

Culturingua addresses these challenges and promotes collective investment in the Silk Road Cultural Heritage District through a multi-pronged approach, developing solutions at the intersection of people, place, and economic opportunity. Key areas of focus include: 

Building a Bridge to City Hall 

A defining feature of Culturingua’s impact is its ability to bridge newcomer communities and local government, translating trusted community relationships into durable public-sector partnerships. Culturingua’s leaders have consistently shown up at City Hall meetings to elevate the significant contributions of their community and advocate for their interests; in return, the city has repeatedly reached out to ask Culturingua to lead initiatives such as multilingual Census outreach and an integration initiative for newly arrived Afghans called Community of Welcome. In 2021, a signature event for this program, the San Antonio Welcome Walk, featured influential speakers, including then-Mayor Ron Nirenberg. As the organization’s profile grew, it established important connections with city council members who eventually championed the Silk Road Cultural Heritage District designation. Leaders Mavrakis and Mehdawi seized each opportunity to build introductions to elected officials and followed up diligently to explore mutually beneficial partnerships with the long game in mind. 

Culturingua’s savviness in navigating government processes and identifying potential opportunities has brought wins large and small for the organization and community members alike. Within the Silk Road District, the organization has helped small business owners access funding for storefront improvements and noise mitigation, for example, providing the resources restaurants need to update their facilities and attract new customers.  

Takeaways

Culturingua’s story illustrates what becomes possible when community leaders pair deep local trust with strategic adaptation and neighborhood-level systems change. Their journey offers concrete lessons for JFF and the broader field: 

• Start with place, not programs: Ground strategies in a community’s histories, assets, and geographies, using placemaking to build shared identity and belonging rather than layering generic initiatives onto a neighborhood. 
• Design from community assets and constraints: Build pathways that leverage participants’ existing skills while aligning with cultural, religious, and financial realities—for example, pairing entrepreneurship training with interest-free capital or collective models of ownership. 
• Invest in relationships and narrative strategy: Cultivate long-term, trust-based partnerships with local government and intermediaries and be intentional about public messaging so that it both advances impact and protects vulnerable communities—mirroring broader themes shared across the RISE network around ecosystem-building, narrative change, and resilient, community-led models of immigrant economic mobility. 

In a moment when polarization and economic uncertainty are reshaping local institutions across the country, Culturingua’s example shows how community-based organizations can anchor a shared sense of place while building asset-based pathways to economic advancement.