Meet Maurine Molak | Co-Founder David’s Legacy Foundation

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maurine Molak and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maurine, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Hi Maurine, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?

Starting our non-profit, David’s Legacy Foundation, was very organic and community driven. In early 2016, my youngest son David died by suicide after experiencing months of devastating cyberbullying that left him feeling helpless and hopeless. In response, my oldest son’s medical school class at UTHCSA (University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio) started a Go Fund Me to help raise awareness for the growing crisis of cyberbullying and suicide. At the time we were walking through the dense fog of complicated grief and suffering that we didn’t know what we would do with those funds. Thankfully, there was this huge swell of community support behind us; financially, prayerfully, and personally. What was really interesting was the number of young parents, whom we didn’t even know, that reached out to us to say they wanted to be involved in helping find solutions. They were so afraid of what the online world of social media would look like when their children got to high school that they couldn’t just stand by and let it continue. We heard over and over, “There but for the grace of God go I ”. Included in that group were a couple of attorneys that wanted to form a non-profit to provide pro-bono legal services to families whose children were being targeted. They wanted to call it the DBM project, which stood for Don’t Bully Me and is also the initials of our son, David Bartlett Molak. Around the same time, we were contacted by our local State Senator, Jose Menendez, who wanted to work on cyber-bullying legislation and call it “David’s Law”. As a family, we wanted to do something to honor our son and work to prevent this from happening to any other family. We decided to form David’s Legacy Foundation with the mission of eliminating cyber and other bullying of children and teens through education, legislation, and legal action. We rolled the DBM Project into the foundation and that became the legal action pillar. Advocacy for new legislation was our other focus as well as education because we felt that the real instruments of change were the students, where bystanders could be empowered to act as upstanders. Since there are many facets to this complicated problem, we felt that the objective of the legislation would be to provide tools to schools, parents, and law enforcement to ensure that children and parents had supports and remedies in situations of cyberbullying. We advocated fiercely for a year and “David’s Law” passed with overwhelming support and went into effect on Sept 1, 2017. It was the comprehensive framework of the law that affected the Texas Education Code, Texas Civil Remedies and Procedures Code, and Texas Penal Code that created a swell of interest from parents, education, and media which paved the way for us to provide the education and training that makes up the education pillar of our mission.

What should our readers know about your business?
What should our readers know about your business?

Passing “David’s Law” was just the beginning of our legislative efforts. We continued to work with our legislators to pass complimentary legislation in the 86th and 87th Legislative Sessions. However, advocating for strong and meaningful policy is just a small part of what we do at David’s Legacy Foundation. On a daily basis we are boots on the ground; working with students, parents, and educators developing researched based lessons and training programs. Every training session, program, and lesson we provide schools are free to them thanks to our supporters who understand that our work is critical to the comprehensive mental health and school safety conversation. We recognize the importance of student voice, resilience and empowerment in helping tackle the issue of bullying. We partner with other like-minded groups like the UGLI (Unique, Gifted, Loved, Individual) Foundation located in Austin, which was founded by TV host and reporter, Angela Garcia, with support of her husband , professional golfer Sergio Garcia, to empower young people to end bullying. Forever. The legal action arm of the foundation, The DBM Project, helps parents in crisis, using the civil remedies provided in “David’s Law”, to help make cyberbullying stop through injunctive relief. A judge may issue a restraining order or an injunction against the cyberbullying and his/her parents requiring them to ensure the cyberbullying stops. When parents reach out to us for help, they too are often in crisis. They are not sleeping well and often worried they will lose their job because they have to miss so much work while working with their child’s school. We know that if we can help the parent outside of the school system then that parent will be in a much better position to help their child. We think about it like the safety brief on an airplane…put the oxygen mask on the parent first so they can in turn put the oxygen mask on their child.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

We have been successful, not because of one single person, but because of “community”. We have a broad group of students, educators, parents, mental health providers, law enforcement and legal experts who continue to fight this battle with us on a daily basis. We engage with a thoughtful and caring bi-partisan group of legislators, led by Senator Jose Menendez and Representative Steve Allison, who understand that cyberbullying and bullying is a public health crisis and not a political issue. They have rallied their respective colleagues to pass meaningful and impactful legislation that is saving lives in Texas. We may not all agree on how to approach the issue but we all work together by treating each other with the dignity and respect we all deserve as human beings. Isn’t that the message we want to share with our children? My shoutout is to “community” because it really does take all of us working together to make the real world and the on-line world a kinder place to live.

Website: www.davidslegacy.org