Brown Girl Surf

2018, 2020, 2022 Grant Recipient of $5,000

About Brown Girl Surf

Brown Girl Surf works to build a more diverse, environmentally reverent, and joyful women’s surf culture by increasing access to surfing, cultivating community, amplifying the voices of women of color surfers, and taking care of the Earth. Girls of color face many barriers to accessing the ocean. Brown Girl Surf works to overcome logistical, financial, and cultural obstacles to surfing access for young women of color living in the Bay Area.

“All of us have negative experiences from being the only female or person of color in the lineup. Brown Girl Surf reaffirms that we belong in the ocean just as much as anyone else.”

Maya Yamato

Interim Executive Director, Brown Girl Surf

Surfing in the Time of COVID-19

Funding from The Cairn Project will support Brown Girl Surf’s inspiring adaptions to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which have highlighted deep inequities, including inequitable access to the power of nature for communities that have been historically excluded. BGS has evolved its program to include smaller group surf education and continues to refine its program to reduce financial and logistical barriers that keep young women and gender expansive pre-teens and teens from participating. More than 50% of participants in its programs come from households with gross income below $50K – despite the astronomical cost of living in the Bay Area.

Want to learn more about Brown Girl Surf?