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You wouldn’t think Felix Castro cries at all by looking at him. He bounces and struts when he walks. His chest is broad, his knuckles massive. His hair is shaved close and two tattooed tears mark his right cheekbone. But in a plaza outside of his work near Washington Square, his eyes welled up as he recounted the students’ stories he heard when he visited Lillian Rashkis High School in Brooklyn as a youth counselor.

Castro is the founder and facilitator of ChangeNThoughts, a violence and gang prevention program in its infancy stage. He looks far younger than his age of 37 would suggest. Castro gets intense and emotional when he discusses his work. “You want to try the judicial. Did you try the rebuilding?” Castro said, before adding, as he does frequently, “What the students really need is love.” (more…)