NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — December 14, 2014 — Nashawn Neves is a a typical 8-year-old boy. He likes to run around, play and watch TV.
And, in typical second-grade fashion, he'd rather be running around outside that sitting in a classroom in front of a textbook.
"Sometimes he says he doesn't like school," his mother, Nuria says. "And I tell him, 'you want to come work in a fish house like your mother?'"
Nuria started working at MarLees Seafood on North Front Street after graduating from New Bedford High School in 1999. It was her first stint at the North End seafood facility; she went back a few years ago after spending years working at a North End textile mill and as a personal care assistant in a nursing home.
"I've never stopped working," Nuria says. "Work, work, work, that's me."
She wouldn't be able to pay the rent without working. She receives $300 a month in food stamps for herself and the three children — Destiny, 10, Nashawn and Nasir, 4 — but receives no other public assistance to help with the $800 per month rent, car insurance, clothes, day care for her youngest son, or other necessities.
Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times