The Sunnyside Foundation is kicking off its 30th anniversary celebration with a week of fundraising events aimed at giving back to Tucson's south side.

Gives Week 2026: All Heart, All Community begins Sept. 20 and aims to raise $130,000 to continue supporting its efforts on the south side.

The week opens with the foundation's annual 5K walk/run, called the "Burrito Run," at Mission Manor Park. The race is open to anyone. It costs $20 for participants 18 and older, who will also receive a Sunnyside Foundation T-shirt; entry is free for younger participants, and everyone will receive a post-race breakfast burrito.

All proceeds benefit the foundation, which will also host a Health & Wellness Fair during the event, featuring community resources, raffles and giveaways.

Gives Week culminates in a block party at American Eat Co. the evening of Sept. 24.

Established in 1991, the Sunnyside Foundation was started by a group of SUSD graduates with the goal of giving back to the community through educational opportunities for students and improvements to infrastructure and local programs.

The Sunnyside Unified School District serves Tucson's south side and is one of the more underserved school districts in the city. Minority enrollment in the district is 97%, which is 30 percentage points higher than the state's public school average, according to Public School Review.

The district also serves a high number of low-income families. Census data from 2024 showed that 26.3% of district families live at or below the poverty level, 10 percentage points higher than the state and national average.

The foundation's mission has been to be a "hub of community improvement initiatives and giving on Tucson's south side," its website says.

According to the foundation's impact report from the 2024-2025 school year, it impacted more than 30,000 children, families and educators, including $164,000 in scholarships and emergency assistance to more than 7,000 households.

Foundation board member Cassandra Becerra, an SUSD graduate, said the foundation has given her the chance to represent "a part of Tucson that I love so much."

"It's really about making sure that we provide our educators, our students and our familias with the tools that they need to be able to have access to a quality education," Becerra said. "The Sunnyside Foundation has truly been able to give that to those students and to those families who sometimes don't know where to begin."

The foundation offers a variety of programs to help families. Its Excellence Fund provides students and educators with monetary support, including scholarships for graduating seniors and mini-grants for teachers, while its Emergency Relief Fund helps households with essentials like food and utility support.

Over the last several years, the foundation has also made an impact through its partnership with the University of Arizona. In 2023, the foundation teamed up with UA to get college students involved with the south side through community-based learning, creating three new UA courses focused on learning and engaging with southern Tucson through the El Pueblo Recreation Center.

The El Pueblo Center, located on West Irvington Road and South 6th Avenue, has played a major role in supporting southern Tucson in the past, especially with the involvement of the late Rep. Raul Grijalva, who served as the center's first director.

Last year, the center celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of exhibits called El Pueblo 50, focusing on its history and revitalization. Many exhibits featured the work of students in the courses created by the Sunnyside Foundation-UA partnership.

UA professor Jacqueline Barrios said the exhibition would never have been possible without the help of the foundation.

"Sunnyside as a foundation really stretched the bounds of what a foundation could do in terms of really thinking about investment and research and preservation," she said. "Being able to really connect the university to its communities is part of what the impact really is of this program."

UA lecturer Kenny Wong said the Sunnyside Foundation has given the UA the chance to get students involved with stakeholders in Tucson's community.

"The kind of education I like to instill with the students I work with is being connected with communities and thinking deeply about what their work is for," he said. "Sunnyside Foundation brings the community together. They start to be this leader, this guy that can help make these connections happen."

Becerra said Gives Week is about securing the funding that will benefit not just district families, but all families living in the area.

"It doesn't matter whether you are a student in SUSD, TUSD or Amphi, if you're here in the south side, we are going to serve you within our capacity," she said. "We are really just making sure that we have the funding and the tools to be able to give that back to our community."

With the support of what she calls the "tight-knit Tucson community," Becerra hopes the foundation will hit its goal.

"The funding that we give back to our community and to our families, it's never enough," she said. "What we have found is that the south side community is very generous, so it's really just reminding folks, it doesn't matter how much you give us, we'll make sure that we make that amount stretch as far as we can."

For more information on Gives Week, visit sunnysidefoundation.org/gives-week.

Elias Bonilla is a journalism and political science major at the University of Arizona and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact him at ebonilla1500@gmail.com.

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please consider supporting our work with a tax-deductible donation.