Chart 14

Quality of Life Inventory Satisfaction Ratings

This chapter will describe a variety of contexts in which participants who began with providing services to their families expanded these efforts in order to improve their communities. While there is self-reported testimony that many study participants ascended the ladder from motivational deficiency needs to cognitive and transcendent strengths, it should never be assumed that all enrollees exhibited motivational deficiencies at program entrance nor demonstrated transcendence as a direct consequence of ABLE program participation.

This study includes participants such as Yvonne who attained her GED at the age of 67 as the crowning achievement of an exemplary life. Denied an education early in life because of her race, she worked long, hard hours as a domestic and then as a nurse’s aide to provide her five children with all the educational benefits she had wanted — music lessons, international travel and college educations. Her son now works in industry while her daughters hold professional jobs as a college teacher, a nurse, an attorney and a legislative assistant. Yvonne is also making sure her grandchildren have an education.

I have two grandchildren and I want to contribute some funds to their education, so I save all my change. And when I get my little garbage can in there full, I take it to the bank and have it converted to US Savings Bonds. I’ve been doing that for about five or ten years. Sometimes I have the two of them and sometimes they get a $50 or $100 bond, it depends on what I have in there at the time and I add something to that…I realize how important education is to everyone.