Join the Cause: United for Education

Don't Delay! UCSB’s United Way campaign ending soon.

The theme of this year's United Way campaign is “United for Education”, a cause perfectly aligned with UCSB’s mission. With a primary focus on education and financial stability, United Way of Santa Barbara County develops and leads innovative community partnerships, and delivers programs that achieve measurable results. These signature programs help local community members from the day they are born until the final days of their life, and everywhere in between.

Programs include:

• Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - Monthly books help over 1,200 children up to age 5 start fostering a love of reading.

• Kindergarten Success Institutes - Early education helps more than 250 kindergarteners master basic academic and social/emotional skills for success in school.

• United for Literacy - School readiness and reading at grade level or higher are key for school success and high school graduation. United Way and its strategic community partners deliver innovative and results-driven education programs to 10,000 Santa Barbara County students who need extra help meeting and sustaining reading benchmarks in grades K-12 every day. 

• Fun in the Sun - This national award-winning summer learning program directly addresses summer learning loss and the opportunity gap to transform 350 academically at-risk children — grade 3 through high school — from low-resource neighborhoods into successful, confident students. 220 parents practice positive parenting practices and family strengthening activities through a specialized parent engagement curriculum. UCSB is an active partner (one of Fun in the Sun’s 90+ partners), providing campus tours, college readiness presentations, visits to the UCSB Mobile Reef, and STEAM curriculum and workshops.

One of our Fun in the Sun participants, Diego, a 4th grader at El Camino Elementary School, participated in UCSB’s STEAM programming and now has a personal goal to become an engineer. Diego told us, “It makes me happy thinking about my future and what I really want to be. That's why I'm trying super hard in math and every subject.” Thanks to Fun in the Sun, he says, “Math is easy for me now. Math includes a lot of things that engineers need to do calculations.”

OTHER WAYS TO DONATE: 

• The UCSB Campus Store is participating in this year's United Way campaign by having a "Round-Up" from January 15th to March 6th. When you shop at the UCSB Campus Store you will be asked if you would like to round-up to the nearest dollar. Your change will be donated to the United Way. Last year UCSB Campus Store shoppers donated over $2,000 in change to our community through the UCSB Campus Store Round-Up. Every penny counts.
• For the week of Monday, March 2 to Friday, March 6, 10% of all lunch proceeds at The Club & Guest House will be donated to the 2020 UCSB United Way Campaign. United Way is a local nonprofit that creates partnerships and programs to help people, and every year, UCSB raises money to support United Way programs that serve thousands of children, adults, and families in our community. By dining at The Club & Guest House, you are helping us support a great local cause!