Caroline Boudreaux did what we all wish we could do: she quit her job and took a year-long trip around the world. But what she found was not what she expected. One trip to an orphanage in a remote village in India made the impact of a lifetime. Now, Caroline runs the Miracle Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to providing access to education, nutrition, health, and protective services to children in need. Hear Caroline’s compelling story of sacrifice, heartbreak, and fulfillment — a story that is still being written.
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GUEST AT A GLANCE
After leaving a career in advertising, Caroline decided to take a trip around the world. What she found there led to her decision to found the Miracle Foundation, a non-profit that, since its inception, has improved the lives of over 15,000 children in need. Caroline is passionate about measuring real success at each orphanage and streamlining the processes to make sure every child has access to the services they so desperately need.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
A novel idea
“One day my best friend and I decided that we were going to quit our job and take a trip around the world for a year. We stopped and got a bottle of wine. I went back to her house, spread the world map on the floor, and started picking the countries we wanted to see. We quit our jobs and started our trip in January of 2000.”
He was real
“So she wanted to go to India because she’d been sponsoring a little boy there and she wanted to meet him. And I just said, ‘Chris. Oh my God. It’s a scam. Sorry. They give everybody the same picture. They saw you coming a mile away.’ I just totally made fun of her about it, but she wanted to go and meet him. I got to India in May of 2000. We ended up in this state called Odisha on the Eastern side. And we went to this remote village, 45 minutes off a paved road. We get out of the car. We get paraded through this village, and at the end of this parade is this little boy that’s holding the first picture she’d ever sent. He was real.”
Changing paths
“For me, everything changed on May 14th of 2000. I got up early in the morning and called my mom. I went to this village and worked in 119-degree heat all day. Then, we went to this local’s house for dinner. When we opened the gate and walked in the door, we were greeted by 110 orphan children.”
“I just was not at all prepared for that. So we had dinner with them. We had a beautiful prayer service with them. And then, after dinner, we were just playing with them and holding them. And we were calling them Velcro babies because they would just attach to us. They wouldn’t let us put them down.”
“And this little girl came and put her head on my knee, and I picked her up and started singing the lullaby that my mother used to sing to me. This baby girl was just pushing her body into me until she finally just fell asleep. When I walk into the room to put her in a crib, I see these 30 wooden beds like picnic tables. And, you know, I put this hungry orphan girl on this picnic table. And I just changed. I started the Miracle Foundation that very day. I just knew I saw the human potential in their eyes. I knew that they might cure cancer one day. If we gave them a chance, these kids would be our future.”
Making critical decisions
“I was totally haunted by what I saw there, but I knew I needed some time to think and pray, and I needed to figure out what I wanted to do to help the problem. But I was committed. I had made a decision that I was going to do something to help those children because I thought that if I didn’t do it, who would? And so, we finished our trip, and then I went back to India and visited 26 orphanages on that second trip. And that’s when the idea of a franchise model came about. I thought, why are they all running so differently? Where are the processes? They all had the same chart of accounts. They all pay house mothers. They all buy food. They all pay for pencils. Why is the chart of accounts different in every orphanage and where are the processes for child protection? Why are they running ad hoc?”
Getting started
“We found something called the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s a document that was written in 1989 by the United Nations and ratified by 193 countries around the world. And we’ve all agreed that all children on all continents have the same fundamental rights, and if you give kids those rights, they can reach their full potential. So we developed a model based on those rights and we started implementing it into orphanages after we had 300.”
The ugly truth
“I learned then that not one of [the children] wanted to be there. Not one of them had a grandmother, aunt, cousin, or sister who could take them. I learned that if we were supporting the families, they’re there because that’s where the money was going. If the money was going to their grandmother and they could live with her, that would be the ideal. It’d also be about 1/10th of the cost. So we shifted our model in 2017 and started working on family care, and our goal was a family for every child. Our goal was to empty those 300 orphanages.”
“In the corporate world, you have to be able to pivot as long as your mission and vision stay the same. As long as you want to empower children to reach their full potential, your strategy has got to change. So our strategy has changed. Our mission is to empower children to reach their full potential, and we learned that they are not going to reach their full potential in an institution.”
To give money or time?
“Let me shoot straight with you. Please do as a leader. Volunteers can be a flaky group of people. Someone calls you and says, ‘I can’t come in today because my mom’s in town.’ I mean, that’s what volunteers have the right to do. And the freedom to do that is not a way to run a business. These are very difficult problems. These are very complex problems. And so we have to hold people accountable. We have to rely on experts. We need to be using social workers and people who are educated for teaching. I know that [giving our time] feels good to us, but money is really the engine, and then we can hire the experts that the kids truly need.”
Hiring the right people
“You have to run a nonprofit like a company, so hiring the right people is really critical. Also, hire people that look like the children that you’re serving. Hire people that speak the language of the children that you’re serving. Hire teachers that are in the community of the children that you’re serving.”
Changing priorities
“At the end of the day, we all want the same three things: we want to love and be loved, we want our families to be healthy, happy, and taken care of, and we want to make a difference. Money can’t buy those three things.”
LEARN MORE
If you want to donate to the Miracle Foundation, or if you just want to learn more about the great work that they are doing all over the world, check out miraclefoundation.org or connect with them on Facebook or Instagram.