AWARD WINNING EDITORIAL
MAY 31, 2021 VOL. 57, No. 22
I N CLU DI N G TH E H U DSO N VALLE Y WE E K LY S EC TIO N
(left) Shirley Acevedo Buontempo & (right) Cosette Gutierrez.
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LATINO U
Curtain rises (a bit)
Theaters try to spring back after major losses
opens college doors and motivates students to enter BY PETER KATZ pkatz@westfairinc.com
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ince its founding in 2012, the White Plains-based nonprofit Latino U College Access Inc. has grown to the point it’s now operating on a $1 million annual budget as it fulfills its mission to increase the number of Latino youngsters attending college.
Its founder and CEO Shirley Acevedo Buontempo said she will be succeeded in the role of executive director on July 1 by Cosette Gutierrez, who has been serving as deputy executive director. Since its launch, it has delivered community information sessions to more than 5,000 parents and students. It described its Latino U Scholars program as providing one-onone mentoring and support to Latino students in the junior and senior years of high school, including support from volunteer college coaches, free preparation for taking standardized
tests such as the college entrance Scholastic Aptitude Tests, essay writing support and financial aid consultations. Buontempo told the Business Journal that she founded Latino U to address education inequity. » LATINO U
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BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com Having reached the winter of its discontent, live performance venues in the area are in the midst of once again offering live performances. Whether they will do that with the help of federal aid remains something of
an open question. “They finally rolled it out, and it epically failed,” said Dan Levine, artistic director of the nonprofit ACT (A Contemporary Theatre of Connecticut) in Ridgefield. The “it” in this case is the Shuttered Venue Operating Grant (SVOG) program offered by the U.S. Small
Frank J. Gaudio
Business Administration. As was notoriously the case with the first round of the Paycheck Protection Program, long wait times, confusion over the application process, and technical malfunctions left a bad taste in would-be applicants’ mouths. In fact, just hours » CURTAIN RISES
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