Kultur Mercado was founded in 2022 by Aaron Lloyd Castillo-White, a Yiddish translator, culture bearer, and bridge builder alongside a circle of friends including founding board members, Zach Golden and Jackie Castillo.

After nearly a decade of discussions and community-building work, we recognized a growing gap between ideas of America’s future and reality.

The problem is that America’s population is becoming more diverse, but for many of its citizens their relationships are not.

We started by hosting community potlucks and collective art shows in an apartment, inviting friends and neighbors, and encouraging them in turn to invite others. These events slowly developed into diverse meetings across ages, genders, languages, and cultures. Kultur Mercado was a microcosm of American life in all its diversity.

Without establishing a common community or other connections between communities people become siloed in what they know. This is not only limiting but can be dangerous for the health of Democracy. When communities don’t come together they harden and fracture, a process we’re seeing in today’s hyper-partisan and divisive social environment.

At our start, we decided to begin inviting the community together to learn about each other’s cultures, and to be curious, we have continued on that track since.

We believe that you cannot simply mandate diversity, but you can build it, one event and one community at a time.

Kultur Mercado works to bring different groups together, to explore their commonalities, and to celebrate their differences — together. Through a grassroots, bottom-up connection, we hope to establish a firmer basis upon which different communities can relate and interact, grow in their understanding of one another, and find those things that can bring us together.