{"id":3,"date":"2007-05-25T06:51:35","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T06:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.com\/pages\/2007\/how-it-all-started\/"},"modified":"2013-02-27T10:54:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T10:54:00","slug":"how-it-all-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/2007\/how-it-all-started\/","title":{"rendered":"How charity started"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rural community in Zambia has become an important part of my life after visiting the area during a business incentive trip. The contrast of staying at the beautiful Royal Livingstone Hotel on the edge of the Zambezi River overlooking the magnificent Victoria Falls<\/a> and visiting a rural village has opened my eyes to the world of Philanthropic Travel<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Zambian

Zambian little girls who inspired The Butterfly Tree<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s hard to ignore a statistic like the one I was given when I visited the Mukuni Village School<\/a>, that out of 1,000 pupils nearly half of them have lost one or more parents.<\/p>\n

Being driven back to our luxury hotel I couldn\u2019t get the orphans out of my mind and decided that I must do something about it. I rallied round the group we were with and by the end of my trip I had \u2018bagged\u2019 over \u00a35,000.<\/p>\n

On my return to the UK my husband pointed out that if you send the <\/strong>money out it may never get to the orphans. Three weeks later along with my son David, who was at the time having a \u2018gap\u2019 year, I returned to the area laden with medical supplies, stationary and clothing for the orphans. After being given a resounding welcome by the Chieftainess Bedyango, the Prime Minister, the Head Teacher and hundreds of children, it was a very emotional experience, I felt \u2018at home\u2019 with these warm and humble people. We had just given the largest donation the village had ever received!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Butterfly

Our first donation at Mukuni March 2006<\/p><\/div>\n

It soon became apparent that this was a very poor community plighted by the HIV\/AIDS pandemic, made worse by being close to the tourist area of Livingstone. After visiting Mukuni Health Centre<\/a>, which was totally inadequate to cater for a population in excess of 7,000, I decided to donate a percentage of the funds to restore the clinic the remainder was given to the Mukuni Basic School<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just over twelve months later and three more trips to Zambia I founded The Butterfly Tree charity<\/a> followed by the Zambia NGO registration in March 2007. I am told that I am the epitome of a philanthropic traveller. Having been lucky enough to have travelled extensively around the world \u2018giving back\u2019 is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.<\/p>\n

Besides raising funds for The Butterfly Tree<\/a> I give talks to organizations about my work and also to promote Philanthropic Travel<\/a>. It can be a wonderful experience to spend a few hours visiting a local community and seeing what can be done, by either giving a donation or getting involved in a project such as the ones we are setting up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rural community in Zambia has become an important part of my life after visiting the area during a business incentive trip. The contrast of staying at the beautiful Royal Livingstone Hotel on the edge of the Zambezi River overlooking More details ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8539,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/8539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}