At work, I just wrapped up my part of Feasting for Fiji, our second annual fundraiser to support  Pack for a Purpose create a library in a remote village. Our event pairs juvenile delinquents with some dynamic probation and detention staff to host a barbecue for community partners. 

Children in Lao village with the books last year’s fundraiser bought them.

Education and freedom from domestic violence have been inextricably linked (in my mind) for a long time.

In the spring of 1991. I was a year out of my marriage. I food-stamped and pell granted my way to college and took a Literature of Appalachian Women class where the late author Sidney Saylor Farr came for a visit from her post at Berea, Kentucky.

After giving a reading from her book MORE THAN MOONSHINE, Ms. Farr told us the story of how she married at age 15 in rural Kentucky. Her older husband dominated her.  When she raised money to get her high school diploma by ironing shirts for the pastor’s wife, her husband beat her. Later, just on the brink of taking her final exams,her husband threw her books in the trash and set it on fire. Undeterred, Ms. Farr said she wrote the school and said her books had burned in a fire.

Author Sidney Saylor Farr (center)

Sidney Saylor Farr finished her education, left her husband,  and kept moving forward, eventually becoming a staff member at Berea College and an author of four books. 

As a domestic violence advocate, I experienced a sharp increase in the number of calls from university professors requesting pamphlets for students around the time of finals week. “Her boyfriend lurks in the hallways,” one told me of her student, “and she can’t concentrate on her schoolwork when she’s worried about his reaction to her possible success.”

Super creepy.

What is it about an education that so threatens a controlling partner or an oppressive government?

An good education will: 

• Challenge the student to question authority.
• Increase opportunities for self-sufficiency.
• Build self-confidence.