Pioneer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children

MY IMPACT

Caroline Boudreaux is the founder of the Miracle Foundation, where for the past 25 years she and her team have been empowering orphans and vulnerable children to reach their full potential.

MY JOURNEY

Several years ago, Caroline visited an orphanage in Odisha, a state in India. She recalls hearing bone against wood as a young child lay down to sleep on a hard bed. This encounter inspired her to make a difference and update the standards of care for more children in this situation.

Through her research, Caroline discovered that, out of 300 orphanages with 1500 children, approximately 80% of them had a living parent. Orphanages, while well intentioned, are poor substitutes for family. In partnership with like-minded organizations, Caroline and her team developed a methodology by which families could be supported and strengthened, so that would-be orphans could be reunited with their families via a family support model. Caroline thinks that the future of philanthropy is to treat the cause; we can no longer afford to treat the symptoms. In fact, it is five times cheaper to support a family than to maintain an orphanage.

Miracle Foundation’s revolutionary Thrive Well scale methodology is based on the UN Rights of the Child and leverages data and technology to create a family for every child in our lifetime. To date, the Miracle Foundation has impacted 165,000+ children’s lives. The Foundation’s latest project is ThriveWell, an app that prevents foster children in the US from bouncing from home to home, decreases the drop-out rate of foster parents, and brings greater stability to the foster care ecosystem.

MY HOPE

Caroline says that her source of inspiration for this work is the children she’s met along the way. Her advice for the next generation of social impact pioneers is to try and make an impact for others and to live a life of passion. One definition of passion is the willingness to suffer for someone else. The Miracle Foundation exemplifies lived-out passion and sacrificial love for the benefit of children and families around the world.