Hello,
Today is Giving Tuesday, the international day of giving to support causes that you value. Right now your tax-deductible gift will support us, an emerging grassroots startup, nonprofit operating from the Resource Center for Nonviolence. This year Santa Cruz Black Coalition for Justice + Racial Equity became Santa Cruz Black.
Our organization emerged out of a protest against the state-sponsored murders of Black people particularly the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
This momentum was galvanized by the national racial reckoning which transitioned into the institutionalization of this movement. Santa Cruz Black endeavors to sustain this level of joy, resistance, and empowerment with our programs. We’ve been doing this work since 2020.
There’s experience and then there’s innovation. Give yourself what the system took away from you: the freedom to create.
We are excited to be participating in the Santa Cruz Gives campaign which will help elevate our organization to the next level and allow us to do this important work. We are so pleased that as of this writing we have raised $1035.00.
If you value racial equity, youth mentorship + affordable housing in our community than your support for Santa Cruz Black will have a tremendous impact because it means we’ll have more resources to continue our work in 2023.
The project you will be supporting for this Santa Cruz Gives campaign season is the Melanated Makerspace. This is our youth leadership program that will connect black youth in Santa Cruz County to employment opportunities, scholarships, community activism, mentorship, and transferable skills.
Those who participate in this program will attend workshops, be mentored by community member entrepreneurs, connect and learn about vocational services programs, and create digital projects in order to become future Black leaders in our community and beyond.
There are two potent ingredients to this project: There’s experience and then there’s innovation. Melanated Makerspace is opening up a portal for youth leadership to create for our community what an institutionalized racist system took away.
To reiterate our organization began out of grassroots community organizing in response to the racial reckoning of 2020. These events and the fact that the Black residents of Santa Cruz County are only 1.7 % of the total population were catalysts to bring Black concerns out of the shadows and into the forefront in this county.
We are dedicated to Black initiatives through community engagement, including: our commitment to closing the racial wealth, developing affordable housing opportunities, empowering youth, and creating community events for Black residents in Santa Cruz County. We are on the verge of the next phase of our growth.
With your help, we can be successful in our Melanated Makerspace project.
This campaign began last week with
Santa Cruz Gives launch and goes through December 31. Your support will allow
us to increase our program funding, increase our team, and fund our
organization through 2023.
We invite you to join us and support community building and make our Black community stronger.
Help us reach our goal of $50,000.00.
Your contribution will go a long way in helping to make the invisible visible. You can support this campaign in a couple ways.
1. Become a backer by supporting us here at Santa Cruz Gives. ANY amount makes a huge impact towards supporting us as we work to grow as an organization in 2023.
2. SPREAD the word. We are asking each person to spread the campaign via email & social media to 5-10 people they know who value racial equity, youth mentorship and affordable housing solutions and that they think would support this campaign as a backer and/or also pass it along to others.
Visit our campaign page: https://santacruzgives.org/nonprofit/scblack/.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions by email at info[at]santacruz.black. We appreciate your time and commitment to this community and hope that you will help us make this campaign successful.
