Kara Higgins, first and foremost, is a mother to six children, biological, adopted, and fostered. After adjusting to life parenting her children from hard places, Kara recognized the significant impact that trauma has on every aspect of life. Working as a midwife in a large community health center, delivering more than five-hundred babies of women who were trafficked and abused, often immigrants and refugees, she began studying and immersing herself in trauma informed care, learning all that she could to meet the needs of not only the children in her own family, but of children in local delivery rooms and in Rwanda as well. She and her husband founded Imana Kids: Orphan Care Ministry, an educational sponsorship program in Rwanda with a focus on trauma informed interventions, learning, and care, setting it apart from other international orphan care programs. As founder and co-director, she believes that the only long term and viable solution for ending the orphan crisis is to provide a safe space for healing and a toolset for breaking the cycle of poverty.
Kara has been trained and certified in Cultivating Connection, a parent to parent program under the umbrella of Empowered to Connect. She facilitates classes as well as one on one coaching for foster and adoptive families, social workers, counselors and medical students on applying trauma informed care, TBRI (trust based relational interventions).
Kara has more than twenty-four years of experience as an international healthcare provider and orphan care advocate for some of the most vulnerable populations of women and orphans. She has performed speaking engagements with women’s groups and international missions’ conferences.
Kara loves good coffee, meaningful conversations, snuggling babies and 90s hip hop.
