Katelyn Joy Durst
Born: February 14, 1988
Place of Birth: Unknown ( somewhere in Philadelphia metro)
Ethnicity: Black and White
Born: February 14, 1988
Place of Birth: Unknown ( somewhere in Philadelphia metro)
Ethnicity: Black and White
Travel Experience
I joke about growing up on the road a lot. When I was a young child, my family and I would always travel in long road trips cross country to go to my father's annual meetings that were always hosted by different states. My first time getting out on my own was when I was part of the AmeriCorps Red Cross Disaster Preparedness team and I was "deployed" to work in San Diego for the victims of wildfires in 2007. I remember being shocked by the emptiness of the city, we came in and the roads were absolutely clear. I worked at a few different shelters and listened to stories of survivors, many of whom were my age (19) who had seen their houses fall apart due to fire damage. Following my time with the Red Cross, I did another AmeriCorps year in Washington D.C. as a residential manager at a transitional home for women who had come through a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. The next year, I worked in Denver I worked for a mennonite ministry called DOOR for a summer as a day camp counselor for inner-city youth, it was there that my passion for urban youth was realized. While in Denver, I additionally led youth groups to one-day service projects at the day camp. In 2011 and 2012, I spent two summers in Chicago working with Center for Student Missions. I led youth group mission trips to Lawndale and East Garfield Park and worked at Martin Luther King's Boys and Girl's Club. While doing ministry on Chicago's west side, I fell in love with the city and the work that God was doing there through churches and organizations like Lawndale Community Church, Two Lil' Fishes, Carole Robertson Center for Learning, Jesus People USA and countless others. I was sure I would move to Chicago after graduating from college. However God had other plans. Due to some personal trauma in 2013, I dropped out of college and decided to go to California to work an emergency homeless shelter in LA county. After being there for four months, I knew it was not the place for me. Taking what I considered a leap of faith, I applied for an urban mission institute in Seattle called Serve Seattle. I left LA for Seattle and immediately began serving with a ministry host site named Urban Impact Seattle and worked directly in Rainier Beach at an inner city high school(RBHS). It was such a great experience because Urban Impact had modeled themselves after some of the ministries I loved so much in Chicago. Rainier Beach, being within Seattle's Rainier Valley area,( Seattle Times,2010) was claimed to one of America's be most ethnically diverse zip codes. Every day while working at the RBHS, I would meet scholars from all over the world who were first generation Americans. I was always astonished when these scholars would tell me, "Oh yea, I just got here from Kenya last week." Since then, I have returned to undergrad and graduated and came back to Seattle to continue working with the incredible scholars at RBHS. Soon, I will be transitioning again. This time I will be moving back home to Michigan and will be living in Flint. I feel very drawn to environmental justice concerns and am excited to work alongside the people of Flint as a neighbor.
My goal for this course is to truly gain an understanding of cultures and how people groups from different cultures engage with one another. As someone who is multi-cultural and has been in many situations that were culturally complex. I feel like I've just adjusted as opposed to really sitting and learning with people about who they are and why they are/how they are. I really want to boost my intercultural competence when relating with others. I resonated with the INCA definition of intercultural competence of being one that enables you to "interact both effectively and in a way that is acceptable to others" when you are in a group with people who are culturally different from you. (Intercultural Competence) This speaks to me because I desire to be one who not only understands or acknowledges but seeks to come beside and discover who people truly are and what makes them feel most safe and alive. I also would like to explore ideas of misplaced and displaced cultural identities and learn how to empower and affirm folks ( as well myself) in cultural explorations of identity.
Intercultural Competency
Growing up, and even sometimes as an adult, I have been told that I am "too sensitive". However, I have grown this sensitivity into a tool to relate with other people. On the Meyers-Briggs test I received the personality of an INFJs, are sometimes known to have almost psychic traits when it comes to knowing people on a deeper level. One source says this about INFJ types, " INFJs have uncanny insight into people and situations. They get "feelings" about things and intuitively understand them." Though not everything on the Meyers-Briggs is 100% accurate, I desire to use my sensitivity and intuition to relate on a deeper level and then find ways to advocate for others to receive what they need. This is my value for treating friends and family as well as the people I work with and the communities I am passionate about.
INCA Strength: Respect for Otherness
I liked how this trait was defined as," manifested in curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend belief about( the 'naturalness' of) one's own culture and to believe in (the 'naturalness' of) other cultures."I think this trait manifested in me after living in many different intentional communities as an adult. That on top of my own sensitivity over experiencing "otherness" in my own personal upbringing, made me more open to wanting to know others for who they truly are. My work with East African immigrant and refugee youth has opened my mind to the Muslim faith and lifestyle. Though I come to school to work with a Christian organization, we still provide space for them to pray and aid them in the anyways that would make exercising their faith easier in a public setting. I think a lot of Christians, especially in the age of Trump, have Islamaphobia and living around these youth just taught me that they are the same as everyone else. We also recently morned a murder of a boy who went to the high school. The kids claim he had two marks against him: being black and being muslim. I hate to see the low expectations these youth have and how our society believes we should treat them is appalling.
I think this is my biggest area to improve on. Though I value other cultures and empathize well, I tend to be very orderly person. I come off as easy going and I am but I get frustrated when things happen other than planned. I have learned to be flexibility in working with youth populations and have no problem doing that while "at work." The ways I can continue to learn in this weakness are to have foresight of possibility of change and not let my emotions be personally tagged to changes as they occur.
References
Staff, S. T. (2010). Seattle's Rainier Valley, one of America's 'Dynamic Neighborhoods' Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/seattles-rainier-valley-one-of-americas-dynamic-neighborhoods/
Intercultural competence (INCA). Retrieved September 1, 2015 from Cross-Cultural Living and Service Library Online Web site: https://sites.google.com/a/buildabridge.org/cross-cultural-living-and-service-library/theoretical-frameworks/theoretical-overview.
Portrait of an INFJ - Personality Page - INFJ. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2016, from http://www.personalitypage.com/INFJ.html
Staff, S. T. (2010). Seattle's Rainier Valley, one of America's 'Dynamic Neighborhoods' Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/seattles-rainier-valley-one-of-americas-dynamic-neighborhoods/
Intercultural competence (INCA). Retrieved September 1, 2015 from Cross-Cultural Living and Service Library Online Web site: https://sites.google.com/a/buildabridge.org/cross-cultural-living-and-service-library/theoretical-frameworks/theoretical-overview.
Portrait of an INFJ - Personality Page - INFJ. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2016, from http://www.personalitypage.com/INFJ.html