Meet Jenifer Kettering | Director of Hope Has No Borders: Contractor for Foster Home Licensing, Behavioral & Parent Coaching, Clinical Hiring: Grassroots Volunteer, Foster & Adoptive Parent
We had the good fortune of connecting with Jenifer Kettering and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Jenifer, what’s your definition for success?
Working in human service fields, especially one’s saturated with stories of trauma & neglect, there is always this fragile relationship between my own sense of empowerment and helplessness. In my various roles (a foster & adoptive parent, a grassroots & non-profit director, a behavioral coach, a parent/child advocate), I have to remember that I control the input, not the outcome. Of course, I wouldn’t engage in any of this work if I didn’t believe I could have a positive impact, yet I have to tame the part of myself that measures success in that way. Success has to be internally oriented, or people become projects and lose their autonomy and dignity while I risk taking on emotional burdens that aren’t mine to carry. For example, in parenting my children my success is best quantified by the amount of my own values (compassion, service, integrity, generosity, curiosity) that I input into those relationships, not the outcomes I see in their behavior or reactions. The reality is that even in these most intimate familial relationships (and even more so in the people that briefly move through my professional life) my input is still just one piece of an elaborate algorithm that ultimately leads to their own versions of success. I think so many people, including myself, struggle to ever feel like they have success because there will always be more that can be done, more suffering to alleviate, my problems to solve. I try to relieve this relentless pressure to do more by changing the questions I ask myself at the end of the day from, “did you do enough & was it good enough?” to, “did you do good in the world today & did you act on your values”? And if I can say “yes”, I accept that as success.
What should our readers know about your business?
I am one of three Executive Directors of a newly formed non-profit called Hope Has No Borders. But I can’t tell the story of HOPE without describing the incredible grassroots movement that sparked it. In the first week of November 2023, I got a call from my friend, Andrea, who knows I work professionally with people who are unhoused. She told me that she brought bananas to an encampment in our neighborhood and found there were mothers & children in sandals sleeping on our cold streets, begging for coats and food. Days later her front lawn was covered with donations gathered within our social networks and a Facebook group was formed to coordinate efforts to collect and distribute these immediate needs. Over the next month thousands of similarly concerned citizens joined as migrants arrived at 4x the previous rate and winter approached. We formed a very democratic volunteer admin team and broadened our scope as we collectively created organizational tools like a massive spreadsheet listing specific families’ requests for clothing and work, volunteers willing to transport people or act as bilingual translators, free baby items, furniture, and host-home housing being offered. Volunteers across the city created meal trains to every shelter and encampment we could find- serving meals to hundreds in blizzards and on holidays. Amazon wish lists were created for survival gear like tents and heaters as well as necessities like medication, feminine pads and diapers as we became more educated about what migrants said they needed most. People coordinated work opportunities like barber shop pop-ups, sales of arepas and birthday cakes, car detailing events, & mini-markets so migrants could earn money. We have helped people form LLC’s and learn how to pay taxes, driven people to legal clinics & work opportunities, and brought them into our homes for shelter. We even found a church who opened a temporary emergency shelter and another who allowed us to run a distribution closet out of their basement where we were serving nearly 1000 migrants per week.
Out of all this we decided to focus on formalizing two programs through Hope Has No Borders that were already happening organically. The first are host homes- which are a transitional option that protects people from entering into market rate leases (and facing eviction) or living on the streets. The second initiative is mutual aid at its best- where newcomers volunteer together to complete community service projects, while learning about cultural work norms and being given financial support through donated gifts.
One of the biggest challenges initially was the feeling of losing some of the freedoms of a grassroots effort. For example, as grassroots leaders when we would meet with political figures or the press we could speak freely. Or when we were exhausted, we could just theoretically “walk away”. We saw the burnout that was happening for volunteers and knew we needed to build a sustainable version of this work. We joke that we are a “reluctant’ non-profit because it took us so long to accept that in order to focus and fund our efforts in the long-term. we needed to have a formal structure.
We were also pushed to form a non-profit when we met some amazing partners running other non-profits, like 2-1-1 Mile High United Way, who were willing to come alongside our efforts. We bring fresh energy and ideas, and they bring the wisdom of experience & powerful data collection tools. We are still active leaders in our group of more than 8000 volunteers and migrants- but we also want to build programs that bring us out of crisis responses and into long-term strategies. We know this challenge isn’t going to disappear; as long as global inequality exists, nothing will stop the hope that drives people to migrate.
Another major challenge we face is building processes that can be adapted to the ever-changing needs of different populations of migrants as well as working within the changing policies of the federal and local government. For example, Denver recently and abruptly stopped all sheltering of migrants. Now any who arrive here basically have 3 days to decide to go somewhere else or they end up homeless on our streets. So now more than ever we need a transitional option, like host homes, for people to figure out their way forward. And it’s challenging finding funding fast enough to meet this need and make sure people who open their homes and properties to offer this, are given a version of support that leads to success.
We know that the extreme visibility of this humanitarian crisis in each of our neighborhoods is what opened our eyes and activated us. We believe if more communities personally witnessed the basic human needs of these newcomers, saw their passionate desire to work, built relationships with them, & watched them become self-sufficient- the impersonal politics that paralyze progress will someday change. At least, that’s what I HOPE for….
Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
It’s hard not to be a little generic with this answer. Let’s say it is summer. We are surely going to a Red Rocks show. We are biking around the 900+ mile network of paved trails throughout Denver. We are taking a road trip up to Buena Vista and camping near chalk creek- then spending a day at Mt. Princeton hot springs. If they have kids we’d go to Paco Sanchez Park, Elitches, or the Children’s Museum. We would certainly spend a day picnicking at the “beach” at Bear Creek State park where we would go stand-up-paddleboarding. If they are athletic, we would bike up Lookout Mountain or Squaw Pass or mountain bike at 3 Sisters. We’d probably also take a stroll around Sloan’s lake and follow it up with a visit to Edgewater Public Market or Edgewater Beergarden. If it was a first Friday, we would explore all the galleries and activities at 40 West Art Walk. We would eat Santiago’s burritos in the morning or if we were feeling fancier, we would sit down for brunch at Sassafras and explore the books store and shops on 32nd Ave. If we felt like a drive to the “east side” we would shop for some vinyl at Twist & Shout.
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I was raised within a deeply religious environment. While I no longer share the beliefs of my family, I still carry the belief that a meaningful life cannot not self-contained- that I should be deeply concerned with and connected to the world around me. Service to others in work and volunteerism has always been emphasized and was normalized through my upbringing. I am not sure if my innate curiosity about other people was genetically passed to me or taught to me by the oft repeated phrase of my father- “behind every set of eyes is a story”. But regardless I am driven by a sincere curiosity and desire to engage in intimate conversations with people- especially those often misunderstood or judged by society (i.e., unhoused people addicted to meth/fentanyl, people with disabilities, newly arriving migrants, older people with dementia, etc.) Now my career choices are always based around opportunities to support these populations and learn from their life stories.
I was always a passionate reader as a child and this was vital in expanding the insulated religious world I was raised in. While memoirs are naturally my favorite genre, a book of fiction that was important during my formative years was Barbra Kingsolver’s “Poisonwood Bible”. The story is told in alternating chapters from the perspective of each family member, and even the jungle itself, as a group of missionaries enter the Congo to convert the natives there. It was one of the first times I’d read a story told from so many dissimilar viewpoints and it taught me a lot about the subjectivity of the human experience.
Lastly, while I can’t name her publicly, a student I taught during my brief time as a high school teacher also changed the trajectory of my life. She was a brilliant girl who had endured horrible abuse as a child and was living out her teen years in a large foster home. I knew that she had all the elements within her to build a beautiful life, but just lacked the solid foundation of a home where she felt wanted and loved. Though it wasn’t until after I gave birth to my daughter that I finally became a foster parent myself- the original spark was ignited by this precious student. Because of her I even made my husband promise that we would only have one biological child, and then open our home to a child that already existed. Now we get to be that solid foundation for my son (now adopted), and he finally has a “forever home” which every child deserves. This is a great illustration of the idea that “I am a part of all that I have met” and the paradox inherent in relationships: that we can’t change people…. but we do change people & they change us. This is how I hold onto HOPE, even in the most seemingly tragic of circumstances; I do my best not to underestimate the meaning of any relationship and the potential for growth and change. I actually think the most dangerous thought in the world, that paralyzes progress and leads to despair, is the belief that “nothing can change”.
Website: https://www.hopehasnoborders.org
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_hopehasnoborders_/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HopeHasNoBorders/
Image Credits
Vanessa Coates
Rebecca M. Elliot
Katie Reinisch
Kristin Allison
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