Introduction To KlaasKids

Why was the KlaasKids foundation created?

The KlaasKids foundation was created with the mission of stopping crimes against children to ensure that what happened to my child doesn't happen to other children. I had choices to make after my daughter was kidnapped and murdered, and those choices really had much to do with my survival because it was such an ordeal. It was such a profound loss to me, that I really wanted to be dead for a long period of time, and I couldn't go into denial and pretend it hadn't happened. I didn't want to become a drug addict, an alcoholic or a manic depressive, so I chose to fight back, and I had a few epiphanies during the 65 days we were searching for Polly. They enabled me to see things in different ways than I had before, and to have some clarity on this issue of child safety. With the support of my wife, primarily, we've just been pursuing that mission ever since, and it's been a very good thing for us because in the 14 years we've been doing it, we've gone from being very desperate people to relatively happy people given our circumstance.

What does the KlaasKids foundation do?

Well, our mission is to stop crimes against children and we do take a holistic approach to the issue. We travel throughout the country doing fingerprint programs where we impart good child safety information, where we give parents tools to protect their children, where we try to spread a grassroots message about this issue that we feel is so important. But, conversely, we also work with communities, we work with busness, we work with media, and we work with legislators because each one of those areas can greatly affect the welfare of kids in our society. We try to get those messages out and do what we can to point those different venues or the people in those venues into the direction of child safety.

What is the "KlaasKids Print-A-Thon"?

The KlaasKids Print-a-Thon is a very cool program. Actually, we are a non-profit organisation, so we do have to raise our own funding, or we do have to raise our own funds, and that's the primary means of raising funds. The KlaasKids Print-a-Thon is a programme that we do in conjunction with businesses throughout the United States, and we will go to a community and put on a fingerprinting programme for say, 6-8 hours in a community, where we take a digital picture of a child. We take the fingerprints of a child. We give then that to the parents, on what we call a biodocument, with blank form fields so they can fill out personal and private information. We also give them proactive and non-threatening child safety tips. We also give them a do-it-yourself DNA kit and we try to encourage parents to talk to their kids about safety issues. We try to present the whole programme in a very positive and non-threatening way, so that parents understand that this issue doesn't have to be a fear induced issue; there are other ways to approach it, which is very important for the kids, because certainly the kids want to make decisions that will ensure their safety, and they want to know that there are adults that are invested in that issue as well.