Community Resilience in a Changed Climate

The Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade is a homegrown community response to climate change. Created in the wake of the Thomas Fire and debris flow in 2018, the Bucket Brigade leverages community solidarity and human empathy into a powerful organizing force for resilience and regeneration. In the face of unprecedented natural disasters and global crises, the Bucket Brigade stands ready to lead an organized, local volunteer response. The challenges communities are facing are greater than ever before. The Bucket Brigade helps communities rise up to meet those challenges.

True resilience is inclusive and is measured by how well an entire community bounces back from a disaster. The Bucket Brigade is designed to address unmet needs by harnessing local wisdom and untapped resilience potential. The result: a faster, more equitable, and longer-lasting recovery. When communities have the ability to mount an effective response to a crisis, they build self-reliance and solidarity, emerging stronger and more connected than before the disaster.

In between disasters and crises, the Bucket Brigade trains new volunteers and volunteer leaders with ground-breaking, year-round Community Uplift Projects (CUPs) like Walk Montecito and the Growing Community Project. This approach transitions seamlessly from response and relief work to long-term community resilience-building. The CUPs program teaches community members disaster response skills through projects that make their neighborhoods safer and more connected. The Bucket Brigade’s constantly growing cadre of experienced volunteers and volunteer leaders helps to form a grassroots community safety net that stands ready to respond to whatever challenge Santa Barbara County faces next.

The Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade received 13 major nonprofit awards in its first two years, including California Nonprofit of the Year, Local Heroes, Environmental Hero, Community Heroes Award, and Citizen of the Year for its response to the Thomas Fire and debris flow in 2018. In 2020, it received a second Local Heroes award for its innovative Make Masks – Save Lives pandemic response program. In 2021, Bucket Brigade volunteers constructed two miles of safe-route-to-school trails in Montecito, delivered pandemic home victory garden kits throughout Santa Barbara County, and launched a major climate-adaptive habitat restoration in Elings Park.