New Futuro featured in The Atlantic's series on economic progress

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New Futuro, founded in 2008, works with community organizations and schools in urban Latino neighborhoods to provide students and their families with access to the college materials they'll need, all of which are available in both English and Spanish translations. The company's web platform offers America's largest Hispanic scholarship database and hundreds of articles featuring useful advice on college planning, as well as profiles of successful minorities who've reached high levels in their careers. New Futuro also publishes a bilingual print magazine, which is distributed for free in high schools and through nonprofit and community partners.

read the full article in The Atlantic: New Futuro Narrows the Education Gap for Latino Students

Día De Los Muertos Individuales

Check out the Día De Los Muertos art project I designed for Spanglish Baby, a wonderful blog dedicated to raising bicultural and bilingual children.I wanted to create a project that would inspire family togetherness, cross-generational dialogue, and communal interaction. A project where the process through which the work was produced, becomes an integral part of of the work itself.So, I came up with Día De Los Muertos Individuales- functional collaged placemats, modeled after altares, that can be used inside and outside.  The image below is of the Individual I made in honor of my abuelita.Visit the project on Spanglish Baby and on YouTube.  And if you decide to make an Individual, PLEASE send me pics!  I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.Feliz Día De Los Muertos!xoMaya

Talking About Orchard Street

photo by Julian Voloj

Maya and Gonzalo Escobar create Talking about Orchard Street, a multi-sensory interactive installation that explores the generational transmission of Jewish life through dialog.  The father-daughter duo traveled from Chicago to New Haven to conduct interviews with former members and friends of Orchard Street Shul and to record locals’ stories of growing up in New Haven during the 1920s and 30s. These stories of everyday life include tales of flirting on the front steps of the shul, eating herring and kichel, speaking Jewish, finding first jobs, going on first dates, learning bar mitzvah portions, and hearing (or having) loud conversations in the women’s section.  In Talking about Orchard Street, visitors are invited to sit in comfortable armchairs, sample herring and kichel, listen to excerpts from interviews and engage in dialog with each other.click here for more information about the Orchard Street Shul Artist Cultural Heritage Project

No Sos Frida Kahlo

from obsessed with frida kahlo

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RrS5xvfRXg]

no sos frida kahlo, 2007

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsHCjxKoYc4]

puppets, 2007