State Awards Fund for Santa Barbara $700,000 to ‘Stop the Hate’
Other Central Coast Grant Recipients Include Pacific Pride Foundation, Isla Vista Youth Projects, S.B. County Immigrant Legal Defense Center, and S.B. Trust for Historic Preservation
This summer, California announced the allocation of $3,645,000 to Central Coast anti-hate organizations providing direct, preventative, or intervention services to “Stop the Hate.”
For the years 2022-23 and 2023-24, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Stop the Hate Program awarded a total of $91.4 million in grants to 173 California organizations, geared toward helping communities harmed by hate incidents and hate crimes statewide.
Among the Central Coast recipients, the Fund for Santa Barbara was awarded $700,000 to support its work with social-justice-oriented groups in Santa Barbara County. They said they’ll use the funding to “advance anti-hate and anti-racist work” in the region, corresponding with the goals of the money’s source: the $165.5 million API Equity Budget, passed in 2021 to address the rise in hate against Asian and Pacific Islander Californians.
That funding isn’t limited to addressing anti-Asian hate, however, and the Fund worked to encourage other change-making organizations along the Central Coast to apply. Other recipients included the Pacific Pride Foundation, Isla Vista Youth Projects, Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center, and Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation.
For the Fund, together with its 15 program partners — including the Barbareño Chumash Tribal Council, Healing Justice, and Planned Parenthood Central Coast — they aim to “build opportunities for expansion of anti-hate work at a regional scale, and foster healing spaces for groups and community members who have experienced hate,” among other goals, primarily through making grants and distributing funding to support other regional organizations, as well as investing in educational resources and workshops for community organizers.
According to CDSS, the grants are for a service period of July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2026, and will be delivered through a cohort of “Regional Leads,” who will subgrant Stop the Hate funds to Program Service Providers like the Fund.
