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"Until I came to Project: LEARN, I never felt equal to other people,"says Kay Burner. "I really had no self-esteem." As a child in West Virginia, Kay had severe asthma. She often had to stay in the hospital, sometimes for months at a time. She missed a lot of school. When Kay was nine, her mother died. "In school, I would just hunch down in my little chair and hope the teacher wouldn’t call on me to read," Kayr ecalls. "I was very good at other things. The problem was reading."

Kay grew up, married, and had a son. She went through a divorce and moved to Akron, Ohio. "At first, my life was miserable," said Kay, "I couldn’t fill out job applications. I never wanted to go out because I was always getting lost." 

Kay and Adrian, her new husband, found Project: LEARN of Summit County. "It was so hard to ask to learn to read," Kay recalls. "But the lady said, ‘we’re going to get you a tutor, and you’re going to learn to read.’" 

"The materials helped me learn phonics. I learned how to study, too. I have such a different life now," Kay said. "I write letters to my family. I read books. And," she adds with a smile, "I never, ever get lost."