Support PPF this Pride Season!

Last year, the Pacific Pride Festival focused on access and inclusion, and brought together 40 community organizations to co-create a beautiful and welcoming safe space for our whole community. It’s time to do it again. 

We need your continued support during Pride season and beyond.

This year, among the glitter and the pool parties, we’re also facing some of the most insidious and sustained attacks on our community that we’ve seen in decades. Locally, we face protests at Drag Storytime with Miss Angel, upheaval over pride symbols in the Santa Ynez Valley, continuing threats to public health in the form of Mpox and opioids, and the emerging threat of the drug, xylazine. Across the country, our community is under attack: in 2023 alone, over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been proposed from trans-exclusionary bathroom bills to bans on drag performances.

That is why in Santa Barbara County, Pacific Pride Foundation (PPF) is proud to work everyday with you, community partners, and funders to ensure that the LGBTQ+ and HIV-impacted communities of our region are vibrant, thriving, and visible. In the past year, PPF has:

• expanded youth programming in Santa Maria and syringe services in Lompoc;
• led the local response to Mpox, which distributed more than 500 vaccines;
• expanded counseling to LGBTQ+ monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers in our community;
• taken the lead in overdose prevention work in Santa Barbara County;
• become the first fiscal sponsor of Carp Pride;
• secured nearly half a million dollars in funding specifically for the health of lesbian, bisexual and queer women, and trans and nonbinary people;
• participated in roundtables with the federal government regarding lesbian health, Mpox, and the national drug strategy;
• launched work to become a bilingual (Spanish and English) organization by 2024.

Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve done all of this in addition to providing our usual suite of life-affirming programs for youth, older adults, people who use drugs, people seeking mental health services, and more. You see, we produce the Pride Festival one day every year, but we work to support our community every single day of the year, because our community needs us. And we need you.

As we enter Pride season, please join us in recommitting to the work that supports the LGBTQ+ community. At this time when so many of our friends and family are facing attacks, PPF is redoubling our efforts. Will you join us?

Donate today and your gift will be MATCHED by Tracy and Michael Bollag up to $25,000. If you’d like to make an ongoing difference, you can become a sustaining donor with a monthly or annual donation. Today’s donations are tomorrow’s life-affirming programs.

Together we can and will ensure a vibrant, thriving and visible LGBTQ+ community in Santa Barbara County – all year long.

In Community,

Kristin Flickinger 

Executive Director