Ashley Catanzarite
Kathryn Higinbotham’s passion for service began at the age of 5 when the concept of missions consisted of playing with Groovy Girls dolls with a girl in an orphanage in Cozumel, Mexico. “At the time it wasn’t really service for me. It was just going and hanging out with the kids,” she told me as she reminisced about her first missions trip. “Language barriers were never really a problem there. I spoke no Spanish, she spoke no English and that was totally ok with us. We just wanted to hang out and play with Groovy Girls!”
Kathryn Higinbotham’s passion for service began at the age of 5 when the concept of missions consisted of playing with Groovy Girls dolls with a girl in an orphanage in Cozumel, Mexico. “At the time it wasn’t really service for me. It was just going and hanging out with the kids,” she told me as she reminisced about her first missions trip. “Language barriers were never really a problem there. I spoke no Spanish, she spoke no English and that was totally ok with us. We just wanted to hang out and play with Groovy Girls!”
That trip was the beginning of an unbelievable commitment to serve throughout her life. The sixteen-year-old sophomore’s teenage life has been characterized by a desire to care for the marginalized in Atlanta, the United States, and the world. Each year throughout high school, Kathryn has joined her youth group on their yearly missions trip with Atlanta Inner City Missions; the Nashville Work Camp; a Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Arizona; and the poorest, drug-ridden area in Sarnia, Canada. Outside of her church, she has been involved with RRISA or Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta, where she’s prepared lunches and distributed clothes to the refugees. In addition, she has worked with Forever Family, an organization for children whose parents have been incarcerated. Kathryn’s service included tutoring the kids in a writing program and coaching them in a running program, two things she’s passionate about. She also helped set up a 5K race in Piedmont Park for the children.
Looking at all the people Kathryn has served and all the organizations she’s volunteered with, it’s natural to be extremely impressed with how she’s reached out to the community. But what really stands out when you talk to her is the love she has for the people she’s encountered. It’s the empathy you see written on her face as she describes how those people have impacted her whole life. Service is a part of her, and she never plans on changing that. Her vision for serving includes a purpose to make an impact beyond the physical needs of the oppressed.
“I don't think I can fix people who are in positions worse than mine, or even that they need fixing. I think that the concept of service so often boils down to equalizing yourself with the people you're serving. When I serve, I try to make it as clear as possible to the people I'm serving that I'm no better than them, that we are equals. Neither of us is the better or worse person; we are the same. That concept of being helped can really make a person feel like they are a ‘less than’ and incapable of autonomous growth and change. Often I have found the best way to serve people is just to be with them.”
Kathryn recounted that the mindset on her Tuba City trip was focused on “doing work” for the people that can’t work themselves.
“I don’t think it made an emotional impact on their lives.”
But on a recent service retreat, the experience opened a whole new perspective for Kathryn. A few MAS students and I had the privilege of serving alongside her at a retreat called Restoration Atlanta (RATL), where “being with” homeless women and children was emphasized over “doing for.” We set aside a weekend to spend an extended amount of quality time with the kids and women at a shelter. During the retreat that she participated in two weekends in a row, Kathryn was able to put into words a lifelong understanding of the connection between two people just being with each other.
“I don't think I can fix people who are in positions worse than mine, or even that they need fixing. I think that the concept of service so often boils down to equalizing yourself with the people you're serving. When I serve, I try to make it as clear as possible to the people I'm serving that I'm no better than them, that we are equals. Neither of us is the better or worse person; we are the same. That concept of being helped can really make a person feel like they are a ‘less than’ and incapable of autonomous growth and change. Often I have found the best way to serve people is just to be with them.”
Kathryn recounted that the mindset on her Tuba City trip was focused on “doing work” for the people that can’t work themselves.
“I don’t think it made an emotional impact on their lives.”
But on a recent service retreat, the experience opened a whole new perspective for Kathryn. A few MAS students and I had the privilege of serving alongside her at a retreat called Restoration Atlanta (RATL), where “being with” homeless women and children was emphasized over “doing for.” We set aside a weekend to spend an extended amount of quality time with the kids and women at a shelter. During the retreat that she participated in two weekends in a row, Kathryn was able to put into words a lifelong understanding of the connection between two people just being with each other.
Of course, serving doesn’t come without its challenges.
“I am not a people person. If it comes down to it, I’d probably rather do hard labor than spend time with people because spending time with people is really, really hard. The biggest challenge I’ve overcome in my service is getting over myself.”
Yet she also attributes overcoming the challenges as her biggest reward.
“I don’t know if I could go the rest of my life without serving. I would not be a compassionate person without it. It makes me empathetic. The people that I serve end up speaking to me more than I speak to them.”
RATL impacted her life so deeply that Kathryn’s future plans include interning with Restoration ATL this summer. She also hopes to return to Sarnia again.
“It’s really important to go back. You can’t just be like ‘see ya’ and never see them again. You have to be able to maintain the connections,” mentioning that she still talks to a lot of her Canadian friends through Facebook.
As far as a future career, she has looked into a variety of service-oriented options.
“I don’t feel called to continue mission work as a profession, but I do feel called to do what I can to help people.”
From considering social work or therapy, Native American law is also of primary interest to Kathryn. She has discerned the discrepancy between Native American family culture and traditional American family culture, and she wants to address the problems. Social workers in the Native American community will often take children from their families that they perceive as being abused or neglected and relocate them to a Caucasian home. “That is really harmful to the children. They aren’t able to grow up in their own culture, and families are having their children taken away. I’ve thought about going into law or social work in that respect. Not as, ‘Here let me take you and move you into a completely different culture,’ but finding ways to benefit children within their own culture.”
Kathryn and service have an inseparable bond, sure to continue well into her future.
Also among Kathryn’s passions and gifts are reading and writing. You can read her article called “Ghetto Tourism” where she describes her experiences on a RATL retreat:
http://restorationatl.org/blog-ratl/
“I am not a people person. If it comes down to it, I’d probably rather do hard labor than spend time with people because spending time with people is really, really hard. The biggest challenge I’ve overcome in my service is getting over myself.”
Yet she also attributes overcoming the challenges as her biggest reward.
“I don’t know if I could go the rest of my life without serving. I would not be a compassionate person without it. It makes me empathetic. The people that I serve end up speaking to me more than I speak to them.”
RATL impacted her life so deeply that Kathryn’s future plans include interning with Restoration ATL this summer. She also hopes to return to Sarnia again.
“It’s really important to go back. You can’t just be like ‘see ya’ and never see them again. You have to be able to maintain the connections,” mentioning that she still talks to a lot of her Canadian friends through Facebook.
As far as a future career, she has looked into a variety of service-oriented options.
“I don’t feel called to continue mission work as a profession, but I do feel called to do what I can to help people.”
From considering social work or therapy, Native American law is also of primary interest to Kathryn. She has discerned the discrepancy between Native American family culture and traditional American family culture, and she wants to address the problems. Social workers in the Native American community will often take children from their families that they perceive as being abused or neglected and relocate them to a Caucasian home. “That is really harmful to the children. They aren’t able to grow up in their own culture, and families are having their children taken away. I’ve thought about going into law or social work in that respect. Not as, ‘Here let me take you and move you into a completely different culture,’ but finding ways to benefit children within their own culture.”
Kathryn and service have an inseparable bond, sure to continue well into her future.
Also among Kathryn’s passions and gifts are reading and writing. You can read her article called “Ghetto Tourism” where she describes her experiences on a RATL retreat:
http://restorationatl.org/blog-ratl/