Being bullied to the point of tears in a video that went viral was one of the worse things to ever happen to former bus monitor Karen Klein. But it also turned into one of the best.
You may remember Karen’s story. She had driven a bus for 20 years in Greece, NY, before spending the last three as a monitor.
One day a pack of seventh graders started to taunt her. They poked her hearing aid and called her terrible names. But then they said something horrible.
“You don’t have a family because they all killed themselves because they don’t want to be near year.”
This was especially hurtful because Karen’s oldest son had committed suicide a decade earlier. The students recorded the incident and posted it online where there were more than 9 million views on YouTube.
Max Sidorov, who had been bullied in his past, started an Indiegogo campaign to raise $5,000 for Karen to go on vacation.
That campaign ended up raising more than $700,000. This would allow Karen to finally retire, which wasn’t an option for her before the funds were raised.
She also used $100,000 of that money as seed money for The Karen Klein Anti-Bullying Foundation.
“Together, we will change the world,” she said. “If we were able to raise $700,000 for one person (me), I am sure we can raise thousands more for kids who are bullied every day.”
The foundation’s goal is to create an anti-bullying curriculum and anti-bullying media assets, provide funding for anti-bullying counseling in schools, and to support other organizations who are bringing awareness to the anti-bullying initiative.
“There’s a lot I wish I could be doing, but I don’t know how to do it,” Klein told TODAY in 2013. “I’m just a regular old lady.”
You’re able to purchase children’s books at $20 each on the site. The proceeds of those books help the foundation to spread awareness about their campaign and generate funding for their educational content programs.
It is unknown whether or not the foundation is still active today, their website and social media seem to be last updated around 2013.
Regardless, the kindness of strangers helped this woman who was emotionally abused after a devastating loss to live a better life that allowed her to retired at 68-year-old when she wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.
Unfortunately, one of the kids who bullied Karen was allegedly involved in an incident where they forced a special needs boy to drink his own urine, according to Yahoo. It would be nice to see more bullying programs that focus on the bullies and working with them to heal whatever emotional, behavioral or psychological issues they may have that causes them to bully.
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