Kathryn's Service Year in Migori
Donation protected
Hello, friends! My name is Kathryn Swartz, and I am just finishing up my undergrad with a Bachelors of Social Work. After exploring potentials of grad school, working and who-knows-what-else and then the necessary trust-falling, I’ve accepted a hugely exciting position with Mennonite Central Committee’s Serving and Learning Together program.
This means that come August, I’ll start making my way to Nairobi, Kenya, to work for a nonprofit, Diama Initiatives for Peace and Development. There, I’ll help out with their trauma resiliency programs as well as leadership training for youth and women. If we’ve talked about my work as a massage therapist in the past year, especially, I have most likely frothed at the mouth about the potentials of combining touch therapy with a trauma informed approach. Trauma lives in our bodies, and finding avenues to reconnect body and spirit is, in my experience, a huge part of the healing journey. Massage therapy and social work need each other, and I want to absorb all of the expertise possible in this burgeoning field so I can be of more and more use as I go. So you can probably understand how dang thrilled I am to be working with this organization, recording different folk’s stories, cajoling it into a cohesive narrative, and working to share those stories, and eventually facilitating some more body-based exercises as well. Also a lot of website development. Always that.
And that’s where you, dear friend, come in. I need to raise money in order to step into this opportunity. Please consider donating whatever you can, because it really means a lot, whatever the amount. I recognize that this year has been painful on every part of our lives, including our finances, so it is with even more humility that I’m asking. It means that my life can be changed; it means that there are those in this world that can be supported through their journey out of the buzz and burr of bodily trauma.
There is a $5,000 minimum to gather; I’m hoping to raise a bit more than that so I can slightly pad the austere stipend. Please let me know if you feel uncomfortable with the personal-money aspect of it, and I can make sure your contribution goes toward MCC and not me (I also promise that I won’t stare at you funny next time I see you).
Thank you, thank you, thank you, genuinely thank you. Whatever it is that you give, thank you.
This means that come August, I’ll start making my way to Nairobi, Kenya, to work for a nonprofit, Diama Initiatives for Peace and Development. There, I’ll help out with their trauma resiliency programs as well as leadership training for youth and women. If we’ve talked about my work as a massage therapist in the past year, especially, I have most likely frothed at the mouth about the potentials of combining touch therapy with a trauma informed approach. Trauma lives in our bodies, and finding avenues to reconnect body and spirit is, in my experience, a huge part of the healing journey. Massage therapy and social work need each other, and I want to absorb all of the expertise possible in this burgeoning field so I can be of more and more use as I go. So you can probably understand how dang thrilled I am to be working with this organization, recording different folk’s stories, cajoling it into a cohesive narrative, and working to share those stories, and eventually facilitating some more body-based exercises as well. Also a lot of website development. Always that.
And that’s where you, dear friend, come in. I need to raise money in order to step into this opportunity. Please consider donating whatever you can, because it really means a lot, whatever the amount. I recognize that this year has been painful on every part of our lives, including our finances, so it is with even more humility that I’m asking. It means that my life can be changed; it means that there are those in this world that can be supported through their journey out of the buzz and burr of bodily trauma.
There is a $5,000 minimum to gather; I’m hoping to raise a bit more than that so I can slightly pad the austere stipend. Please let me know if you feel uncomfortable with the personal-money aspect of it, and I can make sure your contribution goes toward MCC and not me (I also promise that I won’t stare at you funny next time I see you).
Thank you, thank you, thank you, genuinely thank you. Whatever it is that you give, thank you.
Organizer
Kathryn Swartz
Organizer
Harrisonburg, VA