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Katina's Story
Katina Woodruff embodies a unique gift that forms the core of the Katina Woodruff Children’s Foundation – informed empathy. Both life experience and the finest educational background have prepared her for the task of serving children. Beyond studying about their needs, she has experienced their needs. Throughout a wide range of adjustment issues, she has mastered the challenges that confront the very children she most desires to assist.
To understand best the basis of the Katina Woodruff Children’s Foundation, meet Katina and learn about all that she brings to the mission of this project.
A Multicultural and Multinational Childhood and Youth
Katina has personally experienced many of the issues facing the migrant children and their families that are served by the Foundation. She knows firsthand the sense of displacement of children in a new cultural and linguistic setting. As the daughter of a missionary educator and a registered nurse, Katina grew up in Australia, the United States, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, and Switzerland. In Australia, she lived on multicultural campuses housing families from many diverse countries and backgrounds. In each instance, Katina consistently demonstrated connectedness and developed rapport with people of other languages and cultures.
An Informed Empathetic Professional Methodology
A highly intuitive person of keen sensitivity, Katina understands the adjustments of children in traumatic transition. She draws children of diverse backgrounds to herself in a magnetic way, understanding and appreciating the power of diversity. Through education she has developed her natural sensitivities into a professional methodology to assist these children.
A Background of Educational Preparation
From Papua New Guinea to the Greek community in Australia, Katina’s life experiences across several continents sparked her desire to work with children of other cultures and settings. As a grade seven student in Germany, she exhibited an early proficiency in languages through an immersion German program. Experiences in her senior high school years in Kenya revealed Katina’s innate passion—cultural anthropology. At Kenya’s Rosslyn Academy, Katina entered programs for the academically gifted, allowing her to study at the university level while completing high school. Here she enrolled in cultural anthropology courses and experienced living among Kenyan tribal groups. She lived as the first European in a remote tribal setting where no outsider had been hosted before. Tremendous preparation occurred during those days with a tribal family in their kraal without the benefit of shared language. Her sense of vocation was further confirmed when she received the student of the year award in anthropology.
Upon her return to Australia, Katina enrolled in a double major in anthropology at the University of Queensland. She gained top marks in the department and exhibited the ability to integrate Christian faith and anthropological method within a secular department.
The papers and ethnographies she produced during this period provided both a theoretical basis and practical tools for facilitating child enhancement and adjustment through guided “Pretend Play.” Her excellence in research and writing attracted the attention of professors, who urged her to pursue a Ph.D. under their tutelage. Instead, Katina chose to pursue her first love, early childhood studies at both Queensland University of Technology and Notre Dame University, where she gained additional practical knowledge for her intended work.
An Unwavering Commitment
Katina’s commitment to children and to excellence has never wavered. Her life experiences have become tools of understanding and common ground with those whose lives will be forever changed by the Katina Woodruff Children's Foundation.
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