Confronted with an approaching graduation and limitless career opportunities, Kathryn Horan (now known by Cilano) was overwhelmed with the number of paths before her. The psychology major had been involved in community service throughout college but just wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next… so she took a chance. 

“Right after graduating from SUNY Potsdam in 2012, I moved across the country to California for the summer to work on a farm camp,” the Livonia, New York native recalled. “I was out in California, in the mountains, trying to find a signal to do these interviews [for Franscian Volunteer Ministry] but I’d never visited the sites. However, I’d done research about the St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia and I was really interested in the work they were doing.”

A few days after being accepted into the program, she hopped on a red-eye flight back to New York then caught a bus to Philadelphia— a place she’d never been and where she’d be living with six individuals that she didn’t know.

“As we drove through the city and got closer to Kensington, which is where I did my year of service, it was really interesting to see the change in neighborhoods,” Cilano said. “You could see the wealth in downtown Philadelphia then the next neighborhood was more young people and hipsters. Slowly driving onto Kensington, you’d see restaurants and businesses turn into liquor stores, dollar stores and corner shops. It was really eye-opening to see how I was leaving the world that I was really familiar with and entering a world that I’d be living in.” 

The St. Francis Inn is open 365 days a year and feeds breakfast and dinner to 400 people a day. In addition to the soup kitchen, it has a women’s center and thrift shop. With so many opportunities to pursue the greater good, Cilano became energized.

“Daydreaming really excites me, but what I found throughout my experience was it was nothing like I could have ever dreamed. It was way more impactful and the connections that I made were more inspiring than I could have ever imagined,” she continued.  

“For my volunteer year, we would prepare meals or go on a donation pick-up or meet with individuals and connect them to community resources. At the women’s center, which is where I really fell in love with the work, we would work with women facing chronic or temporary homelessness. A lot of the women we interacted with were either battling an addiction or experiencing the traumas of sex work or trafficking.”

The Thea Bowman Women’s Center quickly became the space where Kathryn spent most of her time. Behind its deteriorating walls, women had access to clean showers, food and community support fueled by daily group meetings. 

“Kensington was named the ‘Walmart of Heroin’ by The New York Times, and so when we were there— and still to this day— the opioid epidemic was real. Seeing the effects on people that you really grew to love and live with in the community was hard,” she said. 

Cilano says, looking back, she was naive in recognizing her role. 

“I am an extremely hard worker and I am so used to putting in energy and time and seeing the results that I want. I thought I would go into this space and solve hunger and homelessness in Philadelphia, and next the world. Clearly, that did not happen,” she said. “At the time, I didn’t have an understanding of my own privilege and the “white savior” complex that I was actively engaging in my mind.”

However, a small interaction with one man on a snowy December day allowed her to see things much differently. 

“This individual came into the office and he looks like our normal guests,” Cilano recalled. “He was wearing tattered clothes and socks as gloves. He sat down and asked to make a phone call. Meanwhile, I was frantically running around trying to find resources for other people. After ending his phone call, he very politely got my attention and asked if he could make a donation.”

The donation was a quarter, which Cilano slid into her back pocket while she continued to work. Later that night, she was visited by one of her favorite guests. 

“She’s an older woman who had been in Kensington her entire life. She’d lived on the streets for a long time but had not been beaten by them,” Cilano said. “When she came in, she was walking with crutches so we started talking about how she’d slipped on the ice and hurt her hip.”

The woman asked Kathryn, then known as Kit, for help getting home. She had $1.75 but was short 25 cents for bus fare. Thanks to the man’s generosity earlier in the evening, Cilano was able to help.

“This is a moment that helped me to see what my role in service is. It laid the foundation for my master’s degree and my career,” she said. “That moment really took my blinders off. It told me that I am not here to serve and make people’s lives better, I’m not here to save them. I am here to create a space and community where people can come and contribute the good that they can.”

After completing the year of service with the Franscian Volunteer Ministry, Cilano was hired as an associate director for the women’s center. Shortly after, the original director who’d been there for 23 years retired, and Cilano was promoted. While the center was in desperate need of updated programming and physical space, the newly appointed 22-year-old director hadn’t won over individuals just yet so she enlisted their help.

“We started building a strategic plan together,” she said. “In the afternoon, we shifted to doing four skill based meetings a day. Instead of me leading the talks, we brought in people from the community to teach skills that were requested by the women we served. It became a space where people were served but they also had an opportunity to serve.” 

In 2014, Cilano began pursuing her master’s degree in nonprofit organizational management at Eastern University. She said everything that she learned in the classroom was applied to her work at the women’s center. In fact, it helped to secure funding for transforming the space and bringing in additional services.

“Alongside the positivity [from changes], there was a lot of hurt,” Cilano said. “When the opioid crisis got really bad, we started to lose a community member once a month. It was really difficult because there’s a lot of individuals who were my age and I was really close with. Just because we had different paths in our lives, these individuals were put into a really difficult place and abused and taken way too soon. I lost a lot of people that I really cared about.” 

For Kathryn, the women’s center was much more than a job. It was a space of love, support and, oftentimes, a space for grieving.  

While working at the inn, community support became increasingly important. It was during this time that Cilano began dating her now-husband who had also previously been a volunteer. His support and that of two now-lifelong friends, encouraged Cilano to go further. 

After completing her master’s degree in 2016, Cilano began searching for new opportunities working with college students. She wanted to bridge the gap between charged-up students and local nonprofits. 

 “I was ready for the next chapter and had felt that [the center] had given me a deeper understanding of the world, my goals and the community that I needed,” Cilano recognized.

“College students have these theories on how to solve large problems but they’re so far removed that they don’t get to come close enough to see the issues first hand. 

In her current position as assistant director for civic engagement with the Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement, Cilano now helps students find ways to do the most good in the fields they’re going into. It’s a mission fueled by the reminder of the man who previously donated a quarter.