(WARRENSBURG, Mo.) –Growing up in Oak Grove, Missouri, UCM junior Katie Kim was not exposed to that much diversity. That changed when she requested to room with an international student her freshman year.
“I had no idea what to expect, I just asked for an international roommate and didn’t know what country she would come from or what language she would speak,” Kim said. “I got a crash course in how to be friends with people from around the world, and it was great.”

Kim now works as an intern for the Friendship Families program at UCM. The program matches international students up with local families to promote cultural exchange. She also started the “From My World To Yours” donation program at UCM. The program helps international students who are returning home and need to lessen their luggage load by donating items they no longer need or want anymore. It also helps students who are coming to UCM get items they might have not brought with them, like coats and lamps.
“My freshman year I lived with a Japanese exchange student, and when she was packing to leave she just started asking ‘Can you take this? Can you take this one?’ and then because she had an American roommate, all of her friends who were also returning home just started giving her things to give to me, and suddenly I realized nobody can take anything home with them,” Kim said.
Kim said she asked Michael Sekelsky, interim dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences if he knew a place she could store the items the students left behind for the summer. With Sekelsky’s help, Kim was able to store the items in the Hudson building.
“I just made a Facebook status and said ‘I can collect anything you want to donate for students in the future’ and it exploded and I had so much stuff from students who were returning home,” Kim said.
Kim said she coordinated with the Center for Global Education so that new international students would be able to browse through the donations whenever they arrived on campus. She said donations included items like bedding, toiletries, Tupperware and lots of winter clothes.
“I was pretty nervous that first time that students came to choose donations,” Kim said.  “I thought ‘Maybe nobody wants secondhand things or the things that students left behind,’ but everyone came and within 20 minutes almost everything was gone.”
Kim said it’s grown every semester. The “From My World To Yours” donation program now has a permanent location and support from the Rotary Club of Warrensburg.
“It’s growing and expanding and it’s so great,” Kim said.
Suzy Latare, who helps oversee the Friendship Families Program at UCM, said she met Kim when she interviewed to work for the program in the fall of 2017. She said she nominated Kim for the Volunteer of the Year Award at UCM, which she won.
She said Kim does many things off the clock for international students, like driving them to get groceries and taking them to church services around town.
“She’s really been invaluable to the Friendship Families program, but she’s been invaluable to all of the international students that she’s ever interacted with because she has a deep personal passion for serving those students and for helping them know that they belong here and that they’re welcome here and that they are supported when they get here,” Latare said. “She’s pretty awesome.”
Kim’s work at UCM has made her a two-time recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Scholarship. In her application essay for the scholarship, Kim said she dreams of a future with global equal rights.
“There’s no reason to limit it to the bounds of America. I think that dream should be global and there are so many people around the world fighting for equality in different ways and what that means in their country might be different than in our country, but I want to see each person treated equally and judged not by their skin color or their nationality or their language or anything…any ridiculous thing,” Kim said.
Kim said the opportunity to live with a student from a different country has been the most priceless experience in her life so far.
“Living with somebody gives you a whole new perspective into a different culture and then if you live with one international student then you just meet all their friends and that’s been so amazing for me to get to meet so many students that way and develop friendships with people from all around the world,” Kim said. “I would not trade that for anything. That’s like by far the most educational experience, because I remember things that I learn from them much better than things I learn from my textbooks.”
Kim said her connections have made it easier and cheaper for her to travel since she can stay with friends in their countries of origin.
“Those friendships are just so priceless for me,” Kim said.
Kim has already studied abroad twice; once in the Middle East and another time in Japan. She has plans to go abroad again during the summer of 2018 but says she will stay on campus her final year.
“I had a plan to study abroad one semester for each year at UCM, but I love meeting all the international students here too much to leave, I think, so I will stay on campus for the next year,” Kim said.
In the future, Kim said she hopes to apply for the Japanese Exchange and Teaching program and eventually go to graduate school. She said she might even want to participate in a Work Away program where she could work internationally while becoming immersed in another language.
“I want to help people around the world,” Kim said. “Whatever that looks like.”
It was hard for Kim to condense what she has learned from the international students she’s met at UCM. It has greatly affected the way she views spirituality.
“I grew up in church, but I learned a lot about God when I came here, and that has really reshaped (and) redefined my whole purpose and what I’m doing,” Kim said. ”I guess since I came to UCM I’ve learned that I need to learn from every person’s story and I can’t project my preconceived notions onto them and view them through that lens.”
She said she’s learned that God is not American.
“If I want to learn about God, I should learn about God in every culture,” Kim said.