Dates

• Existence: 1944-

Biography

Kathryn “Kathy” Kilbourn, activist and teacher, was born in 1944 in Cedar Rapids. A teacher at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Kilbourn was a member of the Cedar Rapids National Organization for Women (NOW), a board member of the Intervention in Violence Against Women (IV Project), and the treasurer for the Linn County ERA Coalition, for which she also served as a member of the steering committee.

Kilbourn was a founding member of the IV Project, which began in 1984. Early mission statements for the IV Project propose it as “a program of cooperation and coordination between Cedar Rapids Police, the judicial system, counseling services, and the Cedar Rapids Emergency Shelter.” They offered free and public educational programs on abusive relationships, fielded phone calls from women seeking help, and performed extensive research on other programs, modelling their own work on a group from Duluth, Minnesota.

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