Our 20th Anniversary
Since 1993, Jumpstart has been serving preschool-aged children in low-income communities, teaching them the language and literacy skills they need to be successful. We've grown tremendously since then, impacting the lives of countless children, families, and volunteers. Time flies when you're having fun and initiating positive change, and we have some big plans to celebrate Jumpstart's 20th anniversary in 2013.
Stay tuned for updates on Jumpstart's 20th Anniversary celebration. In the meantime, read on to see how it all began.
Our Founding Story
Aaron Lieberman, a Yale college student and camp counselor, was driving back to New Haven from Camp Ramapo for needy youngsters at the end of the summer pondering a question,
“How could the magic that happened at camp every summer be extended into the school year and reach many more children?”
The first Jumpstart program started in New Haven, Connecticut in 1993.After spending summers tutoring underprivileged children and having a mother who worked as the regional director for Head Start, Lieberman saw first hand that children from disadvantaged circumstances weren’t getting the attention they needed to succeed. He saw that teachers’ time was limited and large class sizes prevented students who needed personal attention from getting it. He realized that these preschoolers were falling through the cracks without anyone there to help pull them back up.
So what could he do? At Ramapo Anchorage Camp, Lieberman observed how beneficial a few short weeks of intensive and structured tutoring were to younger children. Without increasing the pressure on teachers’ time or resources, he suspected that by engaging young volunteers in service, he’d be able to provide those students with that same kind of intensive one-on-one attention that he had provided kids with at camp so successfully.
Drawing from these experiences, Lieberman returned to Yale his senior year with a vision. One day in a local New Haven coffee shop, Lieberman bumped into a classmate and fellow Ramapo camp counselor Rebecca Weintraub. He told her of his vision and how he wanted to impact more students, specifically 3-5 year olds, with a tutoring program that would incorporate elements that they successfully utilized as camp counselors. Weintraub jumped on board and in the fall of 1993, backed by recent research and under the guidance of Yale Professor Edward Zigler, Lieberman and Weintraub founded Jumpstart.
In 1993, the first Jumpstart program was implemented successfully in the New Haven Edward Zigler Head Start Center. Teaching staff reported 100% of the children enrolled in the Jumpstart program improved in the classroom. Jumpstart had demonstrated the power that college students tutoring preschoolers could have on their success in school and the program started to grow. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro spoke at the first Jumpstart Year End Celebration, and she described Jumpstart as a model program.
That summer, Aaron and Rebecca connected with two additional friends from Ramapo, Jordan Meranus and David Carmel, who joined the team and led the effort to launch Jumpstart in Boston. After another summer at Camp Ramapo, Aaron relocated to Boston that fall, taught full-time in a local Head Start center, and worked with Rebecca, Jordan and David to raise the initial funds for a full-time Jumpstart office. With initial support from the echoing green foundation, Aaron, David, and Jordan began working full-time on Jumpstart in the summer of 1995 in donated office space in downtown Boston.