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Kathy Abbott is a member of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Chatham, NJ. The mother of 3, she is also a zero-pesticide activist, and works with schools and municipalities to help them develop plans to eliminate the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides in their buildings and on their grounds. Kathy has been a GreenFaith member for 6 years, and is one of the leaders of the New Jersey Catholic Coalition for Environmental Justice, the organization that works to engage Catholics around New Jersey with environmental issues. Kathy has also worked actively to re-create a native wildlife habitat at Southern Boulevard School in Chatham, a project endorsed by the town’s School District. “I’m very wedded to this project,” Kathy says. “I led a committee of parents and scout leaders to get it approved and to get the project completed. We received a grant from the US Department of Agriculture which required that we use only native plants. It is still a work in progress but is looking good and attracting monarch butterflies now.” Kathy says, “In an often overdeveloped part of the world where natural resources can be so hidden from view, GreenFaith reminds us that people of God are also people that come from the earth. We human creatures, whom God molded through evolution out of the elements of the Earth, continue as humans because of the sustenance the Earth provides. Respect for our God and our bodies means we also should respect the natural world. “GreenFaith also extends the traditional concepts of social justice promoted by faith institutions by showing that our responsibility to care for each other is integrated with caring for the divine gift of all of creation. GreenFaith does this in two ways: by teaching that our consumer habits each day are part of stewardship for the environment, and by advocating with poor or disenfranchised communities who are suffering disproportionately from human industry’s degradation of nature. “I serve on the Board of GreenFaith because I think that caring for the environment is a moral and spiritual issue, though most Americans still see environmentalism as a political issue. GreenFaith helps people of faith integrate caring for creation with every other ethical decision in their daily lives.” << Back to GreenFaith Members in Action 
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Individual Profiles:
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Kathy Abbott