Maggie Cunha of Plymouth was 17 and a student at Holderness School, looking for a community service project in her junior year, a requirement at the New Hampshire prep school.
She heard about the Roxbury-based Horizons for Homeless Children, which among other services runs a Playspace Program where volunteers play with children at 90 shelters in the state as Playspace Activity Leaders (PALs).
But Cunha, now 20 and attending Hamilton College in New York, was too young to volunteer without an accompanying adult. So she enlisted the aide of her mom, Kathy, who instantly got hooked working with kids and has done it for the last three years. She even ran this year’s Boston Marathon — her first — with her husband, Robert, as part of a team that raised about $40,000 for Horizons. The Plymouth couple volunteers once a week at a Weymouth homeless shelter.
“I love it, it’s great being around little children and it gives parents at the shelter a break,’’ Kathy Cunha said. “Parenting is stressful in the best of circumstances, so this gives them a breather and it gives the kids a network of adults, which most of us as kids had in our neighborhoods.’’
She and Maggie would get so excited talking about the great experience of being a PAL, “my husband got jealous,’’ Cunha laughed. “So he joined after a year, and now it’s a true family affair.’’
“We feel like rock stars when we walk in,’’ said Robert Cunha of the kids’ reaction to seeing PAL volunteers. “They wait at the windows and watch for the cars to pull in, and that’s a pretty good indicator they enjoy the time we spend together.’’
Cunha said the impact of volunteering on Maggie was dramatic, and led to her doing her high school senior project on homelessness and the lack of affordable childcare. In college, she rallied sorority and fraternity students to work on cleaning up yards for the elderly.
“The greatest gift her experience at Horizons has taught her,’’ Kathy Cunha said, “is that anyone can make a difference.’’
Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at pkandarian@aol.com.
