“….Catherine Bolt is a writer, photographer, humanitarian, conservationist, small business owner & mother of 9. She recently walked away from a successful business & luxury lifestyle to dedicate the rest of her life to building an orphanage & wildlife refuge in Indonesia. The purpose of this blog is to document her journey from the very beginning…”
My post today is to invite you to have a look at Catherine Bolt’s blog and to know more of herself and her extraordinary mission. She’s an amazing woman that I just got to know recently from the networking and she has just got the most compassionate and inspiring project now.
Having sold her successful business (while raising 9 kids – I don’t know how she did it!) she and her husband are now concentrated on raising enough money to buy a land in Indonesia, where they plan to employ local people to build us an orphanage.
“If you can do this exercise without tears, then you are stronger than me, but for 1.8 million children in Indonesia, this is reality. Every night 1.8 million children in Indonesia sleep homeless. For most of us that number is unfathomable.
Over 50% of Indonesians survive on less than $2US per day. Of the 500,000 children in Indonesian orphanages today, almost 90% still have a living parent. They just simply cannot afford to feed them and out of desperation, many of these children are dumped in hope that someone more fortunate may be able to give them a better life.’
Catherine is now sewing projects to sell from her old wedding gown trying to collecting money for their project and as her husband commented on her blog: “As the husband of the owner of the wedding dress, i have no issues with it being recycled and put to good use. Why do we focus on the material when there are so many children in need?”
I grew up in Indonesia. I saw these children begging in front of my father’s car, on the other side of the glass. I saw them on the street when I was on my way to school — I used to think why weren’t they going to school?
I used to be fussy about food and mum always reminded me of the other unfortunate children and of how lucky we were. I watched mum and her friends prepared lunch boxes for them and they ate the food as if they hadn’t eaten for days.
I ‘grew up’ with them. Yet I never had a courage or even to dream to change it…..
For more information on Catherine and how you can help her, please check out her blog at http://catherinebolt.com
