Kayla felt called to address poverty in a variety of contexts, including working with African refugees and by volunteering at an orphanage in Vrindavan, India.

She also worked to address some of the root causes of poverty–conflict and displacement, discrimination and domestic violence.

Gandhi encourages us to think of the poorest person you’ve ever seen in your whole life and to think with every action, is this action going to help that person? He encourages us to shift our way of living so that even things like eating are just sustaining, not indulging, and so that we are constantly conscious of the fact that we share this earth with others. (Kayla’s blog, 3/11/10)

The fact that the population is so dense in the capital, the fact that most of the inhabitants in Haiti live in extreme poverty, the fact that the citizens can therefore not afford sturdy building supplies but rather lay bricks under a piece of tin on a hillside because that is all they could find or afford, those facts can be routed back, in part, to the policies, politics and roles western powers have played in the country since its conception. (Kayla’s blog, 1/22/10)