Salted Roots

Dear Brown Girl Surf community, supporters, and wave-riders, As we slow into winter, we look back upon our last year of deepening and growth, grateful for the opportunities and successes. We are writing to you to share a very exciting and pivotal shift in our organization. BGS has always done our best to adapt and shift to keep up with the expansion of our work, and of our community. Most of the time, we have found that small, but integral language shifts have been necessary to appropriately reflect and include everyone who is a part of our expansive group of ocean beings. The name #Browngirlsurf holds so much meaning and power for many of us. Deep relationships have developed within this organization over the last decade. However, more recently we have been feeling and hearing from many folks in our community that there is a dissonance between our name, Brown Girl Surf, and those whom we represent, those who support us, and those who come to be in the ocean with us. While the explicit gender and racial reference has made many people feel seen through Brown Girl Surf’s founding and growth, today we are reaching for a new name to honor the vast spectrum of identities we all hold. After more than a year of workshopping, consulting, and dreaming, we have, with great respect, decided to change the name of our organization. Our new name creates the space we’ve needed for the expansive identities we all hold, the space needed to grow deeper in our relationships with one another, and with the ocean. With open hearts, we are becoming Salted Roots ?? https://lnkd.in/g2k9kxHv Salted Roots will remain a space centered on the experiences, expertise, and emotions of Black, Indigenous, girls, women, and gender-expansive folks of color. Our purpose and mission is still to cultivate a surf culture rooted in collective power, equity, love, and reverence for the Earth. We will continue this by deepening community wellbeing, amplifying a narrative of abundance, increasing access to the ocean, and centering the intuitive knowledge of girls, women, and gender-expansive people of color. We feel unboundedly appreciative of your ability to share compassionately and your willingness to motivate us to continually be better. Without your reflections and insights, the grassroots community movement that originated with the launch of our community programs in Oakland in 2015, would not be able to make this transition into Salted Roots, an identity founded in communal learning. So we thank you, from the depth of every ocean and water connection we each may hold - thank you for guiding us on this voyage to return to ourselves, as Salted Roots ? With Deep Gratitude ?? Adriana Guerrero Executive Director

With open arms, we are becoming?Salted Roots??? ?? ?