2/13/1956 – 8/10/2022
Donna Kirkpatrick was the Co-founder and Training Director for over twenty years with HBTC, she mentored teen actors on how to reach out and help their peers on cutting edge issues.
Donna was a Graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She had a Masters in Social Work and a Bachelors in Human Development. She worked in child protection, ran a foster care agency, and counseled many teens. She also served as a speaker/teacher at various conferences.
As a young child, Donna would bring home stray people instead of stray animals. She would call home during school and tell her mom that so and so will be coming over for dinner because they didn’t have a place to go that night. No matter what was going on she always had room in her life for people, she made a career of it. She became a well-known social worker in Child Protection and Family Services first in Honolulu and then in California where she met the love of her life, Bruce.
Once married on November 19, 1989, Bruce and Donna were called to Minnesota. Bruce was coming to start a children’s radio station, Radio AAHS, while Donna continued to work as a social worker, but God had different plans and called them into full time ministry. They took Bruce’s background of theatre and Donna’s background of social work and put it together to build HBTC.
Donna took her love for people and helped hundreds of teenagers and young people navigate the hardships of life in a healthy, Godly way. She taught them how to stand for what is right and do the hard thing instead of succumbing to peer pressure and the expectations of the world. Not only did she help the young people that came to her; she empowered them to take what they had learned to help others.
Donna traveled with Bruce around the upper Midwest to schools, churches, and youth camps teaching other young people and adults how to navigate the world through drama and testimonial speaking countless times over the years. They mentored young people from all backgrounds, family situations and circumstances how be used by God to help their peers.