Recent Hamilton graduate Leide Cabral ’11 has an impressive background in community service, and has especially contributed to the fight against educational inequality. Cabral, who graduated with a degree in mathematics, has recently begun work in Boston with the Young People’s Project (YPP), an organization that develops students from traditionally marginalized populations as learners, teachers and leaders for the future.
Cabral’s title with YPP is Greater Boston Program Director, and she will be there for a minimum of two years. She is responsible for managing all YPP programming in Boston and Cambridge, and will train and oversee more than 30 high school students and 10 college students as they provide math literacy workshops to youth across Greater Boston. She will also be working with the Greater Boston site director to build and support community partnerships that will be valuable for future YPP outreach.
Cabral was heavily involved with YPP during her time at Hamilton, and says that her work on campus is what led to YPP’s recruitment of her for a post-graduate position. Hamilton’s YPP tutors spend time tutoring children several times a week in math literacy at Utica’s Donovan Elementary School. Cabral, a YPP leader and site director at Hamilton, traveled to Virginia State University in 2010 with Denise Ghartey ’12 and Hector Acevedo ’08 to present at the K-16 Model of Minority STEM Education: Innovations in Pedagogy and Approach Conference. At the conference, Cabral was lucky enough to be connected with YPP founder Omo Moses, son of Robert Moses ’56.
With YPP, Cabral also spent a lot of time and energy in the fall semester organizing Math Bash, an annual math competition among YPP-tutored youngsters that takes place in the Tolles Pavilion. Math Bash is a celebration of a semester’s worth of hard work on the part of both Hamilton and Donovan Elementary students, and is meant as an opportunity for reflection and recognition of accomplishments so that the young students gain confidence with their academics.
With her strong background in community service, Cabral is interested in future work with a nonprofit organization—either becoming executive director of an existing nonprofit or even possibly starting one of her own. “This job is perfect for me to really find out what it takes to manage a nonprofit in Boston,” she said. “It will also help me learn more about how to train and provide leadership development for urban youth, while learning about how to engage the community in the work.”
During her time at Hamilton, Cabral was involved with the Black Latino Student Union, an organization which she served two semesters as vice president and one semester as president, and was program assistant for Advantage After-School Program for the Bonner Leader program. She was a campus campaign coordinator for Teach for America in the fall of 2009 and served as a teaching assistant for the Computer Science Department.
Leide Cabral is a graduate of Boston Latin School.
