Our Story
Founded in 2020, the Brenda Villa Foundation supports individuals, community leaders, and organizations in under-resourced communities through micro-grants to facilitate aquatics in these communities.
Our Mission
The Brenda Villa Foundation is committed to increasing water safety and expanding diversity in aquatic sports.
Our Story
Our founder, Brenda Villa started swimming with a club team, Commerce Aquatics, at the age of six, and followed her brother into water polo at eight years old. As a community funded program, Commerce Aquatics provides the unique opportunity for the youth in the Commerce community to learn to swim and play water polo when they otherwise would not have has such access. As a Commerce Aquatics alum, Brenda went on to win an NCAA championship at Stanford University, was a member of the United States national water polo team for 16 years, and won 4 Olympic medals, including a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. All of this started because Brenda had access to a pool and skilled coaches to teach her the basics.
After wrapping up her athletic career, Brenda co-founded Project 2020, a non-profit aimed at facilitating water safety in the East Menlo Park, CA community, the same community where she helped to tutor young children during her time at Stanford. After impacting hundreds of children in her local community, Brenda has teamed up with fellow aquatics supporters, Kyle Utsumi and Kelsey Holshouser, to serve under-resourced communities across the country.
With their sights set on replicating the experience that Brenda and others have had in the Commerce, CA community, the trio launched the Brenda Villa Foundation to change aquatics in under-resourced communities.
What we’ve accomplished
In 2011, we founded Project 2020 - a non-profit organization that provides low income youths of the San Francisco mid-peninsula with the opportunity to learn to swim and play water polo.
Our ultimate goal was to change the narrative in our community and we’re proud to say that we helped over 500 kids in East Menlo Park, an under-resourced community in Northern California, learn to swim and play water polo.
Project 2020 was a success and we made great strides in one community. With the Brenda Villa Foundation, we are thinking bigger, with the goal of facilitating Project 2020’s mission in communities across the United States.