- January 8, 2026
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KK Charles walked into a classroom at West Orange High School on a random Tuesday during her lunch period sophomore year not knowing what would happen.
She knew there would be free food, which was one of the incentives to appear, but other than that, she only knew her friend recommended she be a part of the weekly group meeting in the classroom.
It was in this classroom she felt seen for the first time in her life.
In this classroom, Charles met volunteers of Eight Waves, a Winter Garden-based nonprofit investing in the lives of children, youth and families who live in under-resourced communities. The nonprofit’s mission is to help build healthy support systems they need to thrive and empower them to create lasting change in their lives and communities.
For Charles, Eight Waves’ mission was exactly what she needed to press on through her high school career and become a West Orange High graduate who now attends Valencia College.
She found a “small family” of individuals who were inviting, welcoming and warm. They made her feel safe to be herself and share her struggles and encouraged her to be and do her best.
As the eldest daughter of four children to a single mother, who also is an immigrant, Charles said her mother often was preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of running a household, working and tending to her younger siblings.
Her loving mother couldn’t always give her individualized attention, so when she stumbled upon Eight Waves’s West Orange High School Mentoring Program, it changed her perspective and, ultimately, her life.
“When I first got to Eight Waves and people were asking me how my grades were and how I was doing, it was a first for me, like, ‘Oh my God, people want to know about me,’” Charles said. “It felt like being seen. It felt like for once, what I had going on mattered to somebody. In my head at the time, I thought, ‘They’re only doing this to be nice. Let me not get too attached.’”
But when she walked in the following week, she was surprised to find the volunteers remembered what they talked about and inquired about a particular teacher and class. She said it was the group’s uplifting spirit that kept her coming back for the next two years.
“You could tell they actually really wanted to help you out,” she said. “And the food was really good.”
The school lunch mentoring program serves more than 50 students at West Orange High and is designed to help students who live in households with incomes well below the poverty level and who are struggling socially and academically.
The program also provides food as food insecurity is a challenge for many students in the program. Charles depended on the meals Eight Waves provided. The school lunches made her sick so she wouldn’t eat until she returned home from school.
It became a place for her to eat and talk about her day, her grades, her feelings and anything on her mind.
She was struggling in high school.
Although she had all “As,” she felt unbalanced. She was either happy when she had time to be with friends and enjoy her extracurriculars or she was hard at work to earn her good grades. The two never coincided.
Charles, like many high school students, was involved in a plethora of extracurriculars. There was color guard, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, wrestling and track. She also had a part-time job at Burger-Fi, spending time on her homework in her spare time.
She struggled balancing it all socially, mentally and academically.
“Sleep was not a friend to me,” she said. “It was foreign to me.”
It felt like one commitment after the other. Some days, she would go from a full day of school, which started at 7:20 a.m., to wrestling practice to color guard practice, finally being able to go home around 8 p.m.
“At one point, I literally just went on one of the benches, and I just started crying and having a mental breakdown,” she said.
But she didn’t want to give up any of the extracurriculars she had come to love so much.
Eight Waves helped her reach a balance by volunteers teaching her breathing techniques, creating a list of priorities and also finding time for self-care. She was given a planner where she mapped out almost every minute of her day, scheduling time for school, extracurriculars, when she would do each assignment that week and at least 30 minutes to spend time relaxing or with friends.
“I felt like I was able to do a lot more than when I was just winging it, and I got a lot more time for myself to have friends and have a social life, which was really nice,” Charles said.
From the small, daily interactions to helping make the big, final moments of high school happen, Eight Waves was there for Charles.
She recalled one day someone ending a close friendship with her, making her emotional but unwilling to talk to others. She walked into Eight Waves not as the usual chipper, joyful Charles the volunteers had come to know and they took notice.
Looking back now, Charles could see the situation wasn’t a big deal, but at the time, to her, the world was falling apart; she was grieving a lost friendship.
A volunteer who knew Charles well pulled her aside to ask what was wrong. He was there to listen and be a shoulder to cry on if needed.
“It felt like I was walking on rainbows,” Charles said of having someone there for her at the time. “I felt like the troubles I had were lifted away. They were so heavy on my heart, but it felt like it wasn’t there anymore.”
It was a small moment of impact for Charles, a time when she knew she always had someone outside of her family who was there to support her.
But the bigger impact came senior year.
Charles joked around with an Eight Waves volunteer saying prom was “lame and stupid,” but the volunteer knew better. He asked the real reason why she was considering skipping out on a staple moment of high school and senior year.
She explained she had unpaid band fees, which if left unpaid would result in her inability to graduate. Nevermind being able to afford prom, Grad Bash and any other senior celebration.
Eight Waves stepped in, ensuring Charles had a senior year she would never forget. The nonprofit helped to pay her band fees and her prom dress.
“Sometimes, you have that feeling like you’re choked up and you’re trapped, but then when you finally get that help that you need, it just feels like you can finally breathe,” Charles said. “(The volunteers) made it feel like I didn’t have to carry burdens on my own, especially financial burdens. Financial burdens are so much on kids. Parents try to hide it to the best of their abilities, but kids know. Kids know.”
Charles said thanks to the support of Eight Waves, she had the time of her life at prom, Grad Bash and graduation.
She recalled her friend’s mom renting a limo for her friend group and they drank Welch’s white grape juice as if it were champagne, imagining they had fancy lives, toasting to their senior year and blasting their music. They took photos outside the limo feeling glamorous in their dresses and tuxedos.
She knew afterward if she didn’t have these experiences, she would have regretted her senior year. Eight Waves made it so she didn’t have the financial stress to make these final moments of high school happen.
“I didn’t have to worry about like, ‘Oh my God, my mom is going to break the bank trying to do this,’ or, ‘My mom won’t have enough to pay the mortgage this month because I decided to have a good time,’” she said. “It was guilt-free fun, and I haven’t had that in so long. It was so awesome.”
Throughout her three years in Eight Waves’ West Orange High Mentoring Program, the nonprofit also gave Charles and her fellow students opportunities to give back themselves. They participated in several community-service events, including one where Charles helped to distribute plants and educate people on the plants. She also volunteered at various festivals. The community service opportunities allowed her to meet new people, network and earn the community service hours necessary to earn a Bright Futures scholarship.
On her last day in the program her senior year before graduating in May 2025, Charles held back tears as she helped everyone moves the tables and chairs to their original positions and turn the Eight Waves mentoring space back into a regular classroom.
Seeing the empty room that once was filled with joyous memories that still put a smile on her face now brought more tears to her eyes.
“When I saw the empty room, I was like, ‘Dang, I really spent most of my experience in this place,’” she said with a smile.
More than the academic, social and financial assistance she received participating in the Eight Waves program twice per week, Charles said she gained a confidence in herself she never had before.
She never advocated for herself and what she wanted. But the lessons learned through Eight Waves guided her to a new level of assurance and determination.
She saw this in action as she was preparing to enroll at Valencia College, where she plans to complete her pre-requisite courses before transferring to Florida A&M University to pursue a degree in architecture. When working on her FAFSA, she noticed an issue.
Normally, she would give up and move on. She always could wait for next semester.
Not this time.
She thought to herself, what would the volunteers at Eight Waves do?
Ask for help.
So she did.
She reached out to one of the volunteers from the Eight Waves mentoring program to seek guidance. Charles was about to be dropped from all her classes at Valencia College if she didn’t resolve her FAFSA issues and pay a certain amount, but the deadline to pay had passed.
With advice from the volunteer in mind, Charles went to the admissions office at the college to advocate for herself, explaining she had the money to pay for her classes but missed the deadline. She resolved the issue and was reinstated in her classes, allowing her to start her first semester of college last fall without another hitch.
“I walked out of there feeling so happy that I didn’t give up on myself,” Charles said.
She finished her first semester at Valencia College with straight “As.”
Charles hopes to someday volunteer for Eight Waves and give back to the nonprofit that has given her so much. She said the nonprofit gives students like her hope — hope for a better future, hope to not worry about financial struggles, hope they could go somewhere in life and hope they always will have someone to support them.
“It’s truly like unconditional love,” she said of the nonprofit.
