Kevyn Tapia | One Year Later

Kevyn, or Kevo Nobody, began his journey with TFD back in the Summer of 2021! It has now been a full year since we have gotten to know Kevyn. He is a YouTuber and this past year has been full of creating new content. He got to develop his skills and learn new things from his mentorship like how to tell a story creatively. Over the last few months, he has been working at TFD as our Video Content Creator. A year later, Kevyn is now working on a short film that will be coming out soon as well as continuing his growth at TFD! We are so excited to see what else Kevyn will accomplish!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Houmam Kassar | One Year Later

Video Credit: Kevyn Tapia

Houmam Kassar is an almuni of our Summer ‘21 cohort! He enjoyed learning how a nonprofit is ran and enjoyed the small joyful moments from his mentorship. Houmam also talks about how he has learned the importance of networking. One year later, he is beginning his journey into college at St. Mary’s University to study business anylytics and play soccer! We are so proud of him and can wait to see what he accomplishes! Go Houmam!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose & Suha Kassar

Amie Isfan | One Year Later

Video Credit: Kevyn Tapia

Amie has been a part of TFD since September of 2021! She began her journey here as a mentee in Fall ‘21 mentorship and shortly after joined staff as our Social Media Coordinator. One year later, Amie is preparing to enter her freshman year of college at Temple University and plans to major in journalism! She also plans to take on virtual jobs assisting other brands with their social media planning. We’ll miss working with Amie but we are so excited to support her in this next chapter!

“The easiest way to get somewhere in the creative field is to make connections. Network.”

- Amie Isfan

Photo Credit: @mya_rose7

Maya Hill | One Year Later

Video Credit: Kevyn Tapia

Maya Hill is a past mentee from Forest Park. Maya first got connected with TFD through workshops hosted in the Firehouse space back in 2020. Shortly after, the idea for a mentorship program came to life, which Maya then began in Spring ‘21. Now, she is our Executive Assistant here at TFD and is in school to become a physicians assistant! We are so proud of Maya and we are excited to continue to support her in her journey!

“No matter who you are or who is impacting you at the moment, you should do what you want to do.”

- Maya Hill

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Six Projects

We’re so excited to share the six projects that our spring mentees were able to accomplish during our 12 week mentorship program.

1. March Food Distribution

At the food distribution our mentees was designated different roles some did photography and some took part in the food distribution. This was a good way for them to learn how to tell a story through photography.

2. Peace Garden

We joined Maywood’s annual community clean-up event by going to the Peace Garden led by Barbara Cole. We got to capture some behind the scenes of the community as they worked together to beautify the garden. We are excited for a possible future collaboration on redesigning the mural, we look forward to deepening our connect and our relationship with Barbara Cole.

3. Mariah's Website

Each mentee had a role in building Mariah’s website between capturing pictures for her website and modeling for her. This was truly a collaborative effort between the mentees which allowed them to show off their personal creative sides.

4. Amanda's website

For Amanda’s project we split up the mentees into two groups. One group took lay flats of her work while the other group took part in taking the lifestyle pictures of Amanda in the environment they created for the pictures. It was so neat to see them have complete creative control over taking photo content.

5. Mariah's scholarship video

In the fall Mariah will be studying to become an esthetician/make-up artist and she had a scholarship opportunity that would help with her tuition. For this project Jeremy Lopez and the mentees got together to help Mariah with her scholarship opportunity that required a video submission. This was an opportunity to teach them the three parts of making a good film: pre-production, production, and post production. While they weren’t able to do post-production together, the mentees did get to write the script and were able to film the project. We are excited to share that Mariah was selected for the scholarship! Yay we’re so proud of Mariah and what’s to come for her.

6. These are our stories campaign

Our mentees hosted a photo campaign where they got to photograph and share the stories of their peers. Mariah provides make-up services that day as well. Check out their stories below!

JASMYN’s Story | MAya’s Story | Jessica’s Story