Newsletter, September 2024

Based on original newsletter sent on September 2024 via email.

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La Santana Scholarship

Now that you’re up to date with the journey so far, here’s some recent updates! In case you haven't already heard, the second annual La Santana Scholarship has been processed and distributed. HUGE congratulations to Katherine Fuentes Ramirez (shown below) for being our 2024 scholarship recipient!

On a personal level, this year was a leap of faith as I moved away from Bold.org and decided to process and distribute the scholarship myself, which turned out to be a lot easier than expected!

Las Violetas Scholarship

Currently in the process of funding Las Violetas Scholarship for creative-based projects! As of right now, this scholarship is looking like either a pool of $250 that would be available until it’s depleted (ex: one person requests $70, another requests $30, another requests $125, another requests $25) OR a 3-tiered scholarship with varying amounts (ex: tier 1: $150, tier 2: $100, tier 3: $50). Since this scholarship is based solely on helping others bring their creative ideas to life, it would be a lot more flexible and would most likely require at least a project description and project budget!

*Las Violetas Scholarship has been updated in 2025 to reflect new priorities to fund and support creative community projects that celebrate culture, arts, or public services. This grant is distributed on an as funded basis, meaning the exact amount each project receives could change based on the total funds raised. Recipients are chosen at random. 

Creating More, Consuming Less

Speaking about helping others bring their creative ideas to life, this is your sign to take a moment and bring one of those ideas in your notes app (or journal, or even just in your head) to life. It’s so easy to keep putting it off, but there’s no better moment than now. Maybe you feel like you don’t have the right supplies or maybe it’s a leap that’s too scary to face. You’ll never know how far that idea can go and how many people it can reach if you don’t get it done.  

Make the time for it today, do it scared, and do it with the resources that you already have. Over time, what you start today can build up more and more.

Practicing Wealth

The one thing that prolonged the process of making my own scholarship was the belief that only wealthy people could give away scholarships. Everyone has a different definition for wealth, but at the end of the day, to be wealthy just means to have a surplus. If we look around, we’ll notice that we’re wealthy in more ways than one, whether it’s the plants in our room, the food in our fridge, or the people that care about us.

In the past, I would take all these little things for granted and would instead turn my focus externally towards everything I don’t have. This showed up in 2022, when I thought I needed another source of income to fund this project so I overcomplicated something simple and tried to build an Etsy shop from scratch trying to sell t-shirts, stickers, and magnets that I had no passion for. It was like I was straying away from the plot because I associated scholarships with an exuberant amount of wealth.

When I turned the focus back towards myself and everything that I already have, physical or not, then I realized that the wealth in my life is endless. This was the switch that made setting aside money for scholarships and my local community easier. I remembered how others had invested in me in the past and I knew passing it forward was the best way to say thank you.

If you’d like to put your wealth in action and give back to our local communities, then here’s an opportunity for you: Give for Good Louisville. The last day for Give for Good Louisville is TODAY, September 12th at 11:59PM. Today is extra special because it features dollar-for-dollar matching so if you donate $10, your donation is matched so the non-profit organization you donated to receives $20!

Thank you so much for reading through the first ever email newsletter by Mango Street Dreaming!

Gracias, gracias, gracias.

Daniela Gamez Salgado

Mango Street Dreaming