Program guaranteed 69 tuition for college

Years later, students reach goals, say thanks

John Braga thinks he may have ended up in jail or worse if it weren't for the millionaire philanthropist.

"I just want to tell him thanks," Braga said. "He probably doesn't grasp how much his kindness means to me and to everyone he's helped."

Braga, 25, was a second-grader at Harrington Elementary School, which was in Cambridge, when George Weiss, president of a Hartford-based money management firm, made a pledge to all 69 second-graders at the school that he would pay their college tuition if they graduated from high school. The students represented a swath of ethnic diversity and came from economically disadvantaged families.

All but seven of those students earned their high school diplomas or GEDs, and 35 eventually received college diplomas, with one student recently receiving a doctorate in pharmacy. The program is called Say Yes to Education, and the students of the Cambridge chapter, which officially ended yesterday, were toasted in a celebration at Lesley University last night. The university collaborated with the Cambridge Public School system throughout the program.

The university offered the students access to its library and computer labs and provided tutoring and mentoring. The program also provided the children with free healthcare.

Braga received a bachelor's degree in English from Stetson University in Florida in 2006 and recently earned a master's degree in education from Lesley University.

Weiss, in a telephone interview yesterday before making the trip to Cambridge for the celebration, said, "I feel like a very proud parent. I'm absolutely delighted that they have been able to achieve their dreams after hard work. And from the beginning, we've told them that if we make a difference in their lives, that they should make a difference in someone else's life."

Weiss said he was still in college in Pennsylvania when the seed for the program was planted in his brain. His fraternity hosted a Christmas party for a dozen children who belonged to a gang, and Weiss forged a relationship with the youths, often playing basketball or pool with them and listening to their accounts of hardships. After graduating and becoming successful in money markets, Weiss returned and took the young men out to lunch. He discovered they had all graduated from high school, and one of them told Weiss they wouldn't have been able to look him in the eye if they had dropped out.

The first Say Yes to Education program started in Philadelphia in 1987, and since then, there have been three other chapters - Hartford, Cambridge, and Harlem in New York City. The costs of all the programs to date have been estimated at more than $50 million.

Anne Larkin, the chapter director at Lesley University, said the program has continued to track all 69 of the Harrington students.

"As the years went on, we lost many of the students when they moved out of Cambridge, but we kept in touch with them. They moved to 14 communities in the state, four different states in the country, and four other countries. We only lost contact with one child after middle school when her family moved to Japan."

Almost two-thirds of the Harrington students were Portuguese- or Creole-speaking Cape Verdeans. Anilton Semedo was in one of the four second-grade classes at Harrington when Weiss made his pledge. Semedo had just arrived in the United States from Cape Verde and was living with his father in Cambridge. "I was in the right place at the right time," he said yesterday during a telephone interview.

School was difficult; Semedo said he was diagnosed with a mild form of dyslexia. "I came a long way struggling with school. There were some people out there who had the feeling that I wasn't going to make it, but I didn't let that bother me. I didn't let that get me down."

Semedo, who now lives in Pawtucket, R.I., graduated from St. Joseph's College in Maine last month with a bachelor's degree in exercise science. Weiss attended his graduation and personally gave Semedo his diploma as he crossed the stage.

"It was a great day," Weiss said.

Another student, Jennifer Amaya, said she remembered her parents' excitement when she was in the second grade, but it wasn't until she was an eighth-grader that she realized what that excitement was all about.

"When I found out that I would have college paid for after graduation, it made me focus more on my grades," she said. "I came from a family of five, so it would have been difficult for my parents to pay my way through college."

Amaya, 25, graduated last year from Simmons College with a bachelor's degree in communications and art. She is currently working as an executive assistant at a nonprofit organization in Boston, she said.