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Featured Student of the Month:
Donna Klaffke January, 1999  "Not being able to write down the things I want to say is painful," says Donna Klaffke, a 42-year-old wife and mother who operates her own residential cleaning business. "I'm lucky to have come so far from the abuse and neglect I suffered as a child. But I won't feel truly fulfilled until I reach my goal -- writing down my story for my sons. LVA has put that goal within my reach." Donna spent the first eight years of her life locked up. Abusive parents kept her shut in a room with no toilet facilities and little to eat. When they moved to a smaller house, with no extra room to lock her into, they chained her to their bed. Eventually, the authorities discovered her situation and removed her from her parents. But life remained difficult, as she was moved through a series of group homes and foster homes. "They just kept passing me on," she recalls. "I hardly ever went to school. Any time I did get into school and start learning, it seemed, I'd be moved to another foster home." Some of the foster homes were abusive, she recalls. "Some day I want to write a book about how abuse affects education," she says. "I want to help people understand what it's like for a kid who is sitting in school, unable to focus on anything but how to get out of an abusive situation, or whether there will be anything to eat that day." When Donna was 16 years old, her nightmare ended. "A judge finally allowed me to become my own guardian, provided I could support myself." She found a job as a dishwasher and a place to live, and commuted to work on a bicycle. It wasn't an easy life, but to Donna it was the freedom she'd yearned for since childhood. She worked hard, eventually starting and building her own business. At 25, she married an architect. She became the mother of two boys and began doing volunteer work in their schools. But through all these accomplishments, she still felt like a failure in one area - she couldn't write. "I tried night school and vocational-tech, but in a room full of people I always felt pressured, pushed beyond my level." "One day my husband saw the phone number for LVA," she recalls. "I taped it to the wall, but it took me a year to call. I had failed at all the other programs I tried. I didn't want another failure." But eventually she found the courage to call that number. In LVA Lee County, FL, she found a one-to-one tutoring situation that enables her to progress at her own pace. "It's working," she says now. "LVA has shown me that I can learn." In gratitude to LVA Lee County, she "gives back" by serving as the student representative on its board. Her goal of writing her autobiography, to help her sons and others, now seems attainable. To a person who spent years in chains, freedom has a very special meaning. For Donna Klaffke, the ultimate freedom will come with the ability to express herself in writing.
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