2021 Scholarship Recipients
Atheists United, in collaboration with a coalition of local secular communities in Southern California, partnered with the Secular Student Alliance to sponsor two $1,000 scholarships in California. Below are our 2021 scholarship recipients.
Want to help us fund more scholarships like this? Make a donation today.
Christina
California Institute of the Arts
Christina is a non-traditional student earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at the California Institute of the Arts. Coming from a Latinx background, Christina was raised in a Protestant family and socialized to believe she was less important than men. She began to question her religious beliefs in high school when she became friends with people from different backgrounds and different belief systems.
While she was still too young to vote, Christina’s secular activism began in 2008 with the fight against California’s Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. Christina began attending Gay-Straight Alliance meetings and protests. More recently, she attended Black Lives Matter protests, and is involved with her local Democratic Socialists of America chapter as well as Planned Parenthood. Christina says being “marginalized by my race, sexuality, and gender has prompted me to accept, celebrate, and fight for others who are similarly marginalized.”
Christina is starting a Secular Student Alliance chapter at the California Institute of the Arts. Local schools have adopted policies that harm marginalized students, especially transgender students, on a theological basis. She attends meetings at city hall and promotes secularism on a local level in Santa Clarita, which has the largest Mormon population outside of Salt Lake City.
Douglas
University of California, Merced
In March 2001, Douglas immigrated from Brazil to the United States as a teen who did not speak English. Six months later, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed immigration laws abruptly and he became undocumented. Recently, Douglas graduated with an associate’s degree and transferred to UC Merced to study environmental engineering, with a hope to lessen the impact humans have on the environment and solve issues related to water usage and the shortage of affordable green housing.
Douglas began to question his faith in 2009 and now identifies as a secular humanist agnostic atheist. Being a non-believer and an immigrant, he has faced unwanted prejudice, preconceived biases, and rejection. He explains, “my experience as an immigrant in this country has taught me to disregard insults and preconceived judgments, similar to daily situations experienced by the unhoused population. That experience has humbled me to reserve judgment and act with compassion to achieve the human well-being goal.”
Douglas volunteers with Atheist Helping the Homeless in Modesto, California. This academic year, he is working to revive the Secular Student Alliance on campus to serve as community support for nonreligious students and promote well-intentioned activism.
