BOSTON — “It didn’t take long before he wanted to come home with me,” said Kelly Furtado, site manager for Jumpstart at Suffolk University, who met four-year-old Kevin in Rochester, N.Y. “He would cling to my legs and I would try to explain, ‘I live in a dorm, I don’t have any toys.’ He said he didn’t care. He told me he would sleep in my bathtub.” It was then that Furtado realized the rest of her life would be spent helping children, and trying to make a change.

Furtado, now 27, was majoring in English at the University of Rochester in N.Y. when she began working as a corps member for Jumpstart, a national early childhood education organization for at-risk preschool students. Here, she began working with Kevin, who had been taken away from his abusive mother. “He needed someone that he could trust,” said Furtado. “It took awhile but eventually I became that someone for Kevin.” Continue reading →