“It’s not hard to walk around in older complexes like this and find businesses never open and very questionable,” one user commented on an Instagram post about the story.
In recent months, heightened attention on social services in California has driven deeper looks into nonprofit organizations that receive public funds. One such group is the United Women of East Africa (UWEAST)—a San Diego-based nonprofit that says its mission is to provide culturally competent health services, education, and advocacy for East African women, children, and families.
What does UWEAST actually do? According to their website, it offers practically every social service under the sun. That includes translation and interpretation services; cultural competency training; tutoring; non-clinical mental health support; physical health and wellness services; economic and educational empowerment youth programs; crisis counseling; a parenting program; a networking program; volunteer opportunities; recreational activities; “Girl Scouts work;” advocacy; a community outreach program; college readiness and job applications workshops; housing resource navigation; and a basketball league.
All inside a ~1,200–1,400 sq feet storefront appears to be a standard single-bay retail unit in a University Drive strip mall.
The website also lists a section dubbed “What We Offer,” under which they list six main services. However, the only one that’s clickable is a halal catering service called Baraka & Bilal. Interestingly, the hyperlink reads as “https://www.uweast.org/economics/,” suggesting this page may have originally served a different purpose before being a landing page to order lentil soup.
So, in theory, UWEAST should do a lot. One would think they would have a lot to share on social media, but their mostly inactive accounts tell a different story.
Curiously, the only thing UWEAST has posted on Instagram in two and a half years is the Baraka & Bilal menu.
This trend extends to Facebook—where they have not posted a status update, photo, event, or any form of engagement—in two years. On Twitter/X, they haven’t posted since 2023. When they do, it’s very often a call for the government to extend and expand funding to identity-based social service orgs. This includes reposting support for the failed Health Equity and Racial Justice Fund which sought $100 million to combat “structural racism” and its ensuing “social/economic inequities [which] represent dual public health crises for people of color and marginalized communities.”
They similarly trumpeted their support for the California Black Freedom Fund, which describes itself as “a five-year, $100 million initiative to ensure that Black power-building and movement-based organizations have the sustained investments and resources they need to eradicate systemic and institutional racism in California.”
“Black power-building” is an interesting choice of words. The accompanying graphic shared on social media features a clenched black and red fist evocative of the one used by the Black Panther Party and commonly associated with the black power movement.
Another post from 2022 shows them posing with a large check at a San Diego Wave soccer game. Regardless of their efficacy as an org, it’s telling that they rarely engage on social media—and when they do, the posts seem a lot more focused on celebrating (or advocating for) grant funding than actually rendering the myriad services they say they provide.
This matters, because those alleged services translate to huge contributions—and this org in particular is only showing meteoric growth that doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon. Their public 990 forms indicate they had under $2.96 million in assets in 2023. The next year, that figure suddenly ballooned to $7.53 million. That’s a 157.87% increase in a very short span of time.
Out of $7.66 million UWEAST received in contributions and grants, $1.58 million came from the San Diego Foundation, which itself reports a revenue of $268.6 million and salaries of $12.9 million. The Foundation boasts that it has granted $1.8 billion to support “nonprofits near and far since 1975.” Their site, of course, does not make any mention of the organization’s questionable history surrounding transparency and compliance.
In 2024, the Foundation became the subject of an investigation by two high school students who published a report criticizing its financial practices. An external audit ensued, which quickly determined that the Foundation was unable to verify their own financial statements. The Foundation had, according to audits, “no formalized process for routine reporting of financial or operational data,” did “not maintain a comprehensive operating manual or a written set of policies and procedures governing their key functions,” “does not perform or review account reconciliations on a monthly basis,” frequently had “expenditures [which] were paid prior to obtaining the appropriate approval or, in some cases, approval was not obtained at all,” could not locate employee I-9 files, did not report the Executive Director’s salary, and had “significant inconsistencies” and “discrepancies [which] lack explanation or supporting documentation from management.”
This matters, given that the Foundation funnels vast sums of money to NGOs which themselves do not always exactly excel at accountability and maintaining proper documentation.
Public records show that UWEAST spends upwards of $2.1 million on annual salaries, but over 91% of that sum is classified as “Other Salaries and Wages.” In other words, we can only confirm that the Executive Director Sahra Abdi claims a $190,953 salary for herself, but where the other $1,942,145 goes—none can tell. And to be clear, these are confirmed as wages and salaries, not operating expenses.
“I have read a lot of ‘Non-Profit Tax Returns’ but I have never seen 8 ‘Directors’ with no salaries listed,” said Adam Huntington, who has been doing independent investigative reporting on San Diego NGOs. “Now, that could be their Board of Directors, but it seems odd to list them here. Regardless, it still leaves $2,147,356 for salaries at Seven/Eleven-Adjacent Strip Mall Storefront, which feels excessive.”
Comparing the list of names with the current Board of Directors posted on the UWEAST website would explain the appearance of the following names: Mahedere Berhanu, Sarah Tuakli Cooper, Anna Shayo, Anna Slaby, Michael McKay, and Alex Met. But it doesn’t account for the names Haleemah Zulali, Christiane Assefa, Madhushree Ghosh, and Maria Luisa Zuniga—all of whom appear under the compensation section, albeit with a $0 next to all of their names. It’s possible these four were added to the Board of Directors but not to the website, although that remains purely speculative since there are so many inconsistencies and so little information to go off of.
Huntington also described the UWEAST office location as yet “another nondescript storefront at a strip-mallish building while interestingly offering every service you can possibly imagine.”
“It just feels like a Nick Shirley episode,” Huntington said in reference to the viral investigation into Minnesota social services done by Shirley last month. Shirley found that—while this alone is not proof of fraud—many illegitimate businesses and NGOs occupy these unassuming spaces with minimal signage because they are cheap, easy to lease, and attract little attention.
“It’s not hard to walk around in older complexes like this and find businesses never open and very questionable,” one user commented on an Instagram post about the story. “We should all start just looking and reporting, I’m sure it’s everywhere.”
“This is unbelievable. I am legitimately trying to make ends meet with a graduate degree in San Diego and here we have millions of dollars going to who knows what,” said another.
While this is not a direct accusation of wrongdoing on UWEAST’s part, the inconsistencies and potential red flags commonly found across California’s NGOs are legitimate points of public interest. Public dollars and charitable giving both rest on trust. Minnesota proved that trust was misplaced—and now sits at an all-time low. And so, inevitably, social services are going to face a renewed level of scrutiny.
In California specifically, where as much as $72 billion may be at extremely high risk for social services fraud, the stakes are too high not to take note.
Any NGO that takes taxpayer funds but cannot maintain clear records and reporting is liable to learn that lesson the hard way.
