Ultimate Community Support Fund Awardees:
Hugo Castro and Luis Gomez Rosales

In early 2019, the LA Throwback Foundation announced the creation of the Ultimate Community Support Fund (UCSF), to “fund proposals from individuals or small groups, in amounts ranging up to $500, for projects that will promote ultimate in areas and among groups currently under-represented in the existing ultimate community.”

It has taken longer than expected to make the first grant from the UCSF, but we’re pleased to announce that a grant of $500 was awarded on July 30, 2020, to help support Hugo Castro of Embajada Migrante and the SOS Migrantes coalition, and Luis Guillermo Gomez Rosales of Psicólogos Sin Fronteras Baja California, in their work with The Ultimate Border Project (UBP), to coordinate the teaching and playing of ultimate with youth living in the albergues (migrant shelters) of Tijuana and beyond.

The UBP is a collaboration among a number of organizations to bring the sport of ultimate to the migrants and refugees awaiting their hearings for asylum in the US, often for many months or even longer. Many migrant families must wait in Mexico for their “corte”, under the provisions of the so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols.” In Tijuana, many wait out this limbo in privately-funded (often drastically underfunded) refugee shelters (albergues).

The goal of all the UBP partners is to develop solidarity through ultimate, creating connections between communities that can be part of long-term positive change.

Since August 2019 we have been taking ARIA discs to the migrant shelters that Luis and Hugo work with, in a effort that grew out of our Ultimate Everywhere initiative. Moving forward, in addition to supplying discs to the kids in the albergues, Hugo and Luis will be helping coordinate safe, responsible training sessions, in collaboration with UBP partners Baja Sunset Ultimate, led by Rafa Contreras and Oscar Valenzuela. By safe and responsible, we mean that coaches/instructors will not share a disc with the kids being taught, and only kids with pre-existing exposure to each other (due to living in the same shelter) will touch the same disc. Social distancing will be practiced at all times between people without ongoing exposure to each other.

To learn more about Hugo and Luis, check out their bios here.

If you have an idea you would like to pursue that will bring ultimate to places it is not played and communities who don’t yet much play, and you think a seed grant of a few hundred dollars would help get it going, please check out the description of our Ultimate Community Support Fund and, if it fits, consider applying.