Kathy Fry-Miller to lead Children’s Disaster Services

Kathy Fry-Miller has been named associate director of Children’s Disaster Services, a Church of the Brethren program that is part of Brethren Disaster Ministries. Since 1980, Children’s Disaster Services (CDS) has been meeting the needs of children by setting up child care centers in shelters and disaster assistance centers across the nation. CDS volunteers, who are specially trained and certified to respond to traumatized children, provide a calm, safe, and reassuring presence in the midst of the chaos created by natural or human caused disaster.

Fry-Miller of North Manchester, Ind., has worked with CDS as a volunteer for a number of years, has been a trainer and project manager for CDS, and has received Critical Response and FEMA training. She has served on the advisory committee of Brethren Disaster Ministries 2012-13.

She founded and spent 12 years administering a nationally accredited preschool program at Beacon Heights Church of the Brethren in Fort Wayne, Ind. From 1988 to the present she has worked as an education specialist for Early Childhood Alliance, a 10-county Child Care Resource and Referral agency in Indiana. It is also a United Way agency. She has worked with local and state partners including nonprofit, government, and business partners, and has supported development of state-wide early childhood systems including the Indiana Quality Rating and Improvement System and state-wide early childhood administrator training. For the past 15 years she has planned and hosted an annual early childhood director’s conference.

Her previous work for the Church of the Brethren has included writing and consulting for the Gather ’Round curriculum and the new Shine curriculum that are joint projects of Brethren Press and MennoMedia. She is author of the Brethren Press books “Young Peacemakers Project Book,” “Peace Works” written with Judith A. Myers-Walls and Janet R. Domer-Shank, and “Story Gifts for Children.”

Fry-Miller holds a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Towson State University in Maryland, and a bachelor’s degree in Education and German from Manchester University. She has taught early childhood courses at Indiana Purdue University and Ivy Tech Community College in Fort Wayne. Currently she is doing coursework in the Training in Ministry (TRIM) program and is carrying out an internship with a focus on children and family ministry.

For more about Children’s Disaster Services go to www.brethren.org/cds.

Source: 12/16/2013 Newsline