Little sisters, big hearts and incredible charity
If you put them together, Katherine and Isabelle Adams wouldn’t be
old enough to drive a car. Yet these girls have managed, in the last 13
months, to reach across the oceans and make life immeasurably better for
villagers they’ve never met, in lands far, far away from their own home
in Dallas, USA.
That’s because these young sisters, ages six and nine, have raised a
remarkable amount, more than $120,000 in total, for clean-water projects
in Ethiopia and India, all through selling origami Christmas ornaments
that they make and by collecting matching funds for their cause.
It’s not every day you’ll meet children who can say that before
fourth grade they’ve touched more people than most of us will if we live
to be 100. But Isabelle and Katherine have done just that through their
project, Paper for Water.
A strong start
Paper for Water is barely more than a year old, though for the Adams
sisters, it isn’t their first charitable endeavour. They’d previously
raised funds for Parkland Hospital burn camp by selling hand-painted
wooden cutouts of dogs, so they had some experience with helping the
less fortunate.
Their father Ken, who’s half-Japanese, introduced them to origami,
the practice of which goes back centuries in Japan. Once the girls
started getting more proficient at it, the family decided to hold a
fundraiser to aid those in need by selling origami decorations. But what
should they do with the money they might raise?
“We’d been talking about how people didn’t have water, or didn’t have
clean water in the world, and how kids had to spend their day hauling
water and not going to school,” the sisters’ mother Deborah Adams says.
“And so the girls wanted to do something about water. We just didn’t
know who we were going to do it with. Because you just never know how
much money actually gets spent on the real project and how much on
administration.”
The Adams family previously had rented an apartment they owned to a
woman who had been on mission trips with Living Water International, a
Christian organisation based near Houston that’s completed water-well
projects in more than 20 nations. That’s ultimately what they settled
on.
The family arranged to have a display of the girls’ origami at a
local Starbucks in November 2011. The exhibit opened with 35 ornaments,
and the Adams family was hoping to collect $500 to $1,000 to donate to
the charity. “We thought some would get sold on the opening night and
the rest would get sold over the month,” Mrs. Adams says.
Instead, they ran out of stock before the night was over. The family
knew then and there that they could considerably exceed the initial
fundraising goal. “I don’t think we realised that we were at the
beginning of this,” Mrs. Adams continues. “We just realised that we
could probably raise at least enough for half a well.”
After their opening night success, they went home to make more
origami decorations - the Starbucks display was supposed to run for the
month - and the next day saw the same result: All gone.
Told by their parents they could choose to help pay for a well in one
of around two dozen countries where Living Water did work, the girls
turned to a globe to figure it out. “We didn’t agree on any of them, and
so we just picked Ethiopia,” Katherine says. In Ethiopia, a well could
be constructed for a total cost of $9,200. It ended up being a good
decision.
Word spread about these small origami wonders, and before long, their
story appeared in their hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News. That
coverage, in turn, helped lead into the next critical event. They’d
gotten up to $3,400 in sales, which meant they were closing in on
covering the cost of half a well. Katherine and Isabelle didn’t have
long to wait for the rest.
Curtis Eggemeyer, the CEO of Envirocon Technologies, a Midland, TX,
cleaning-products company behind Lemi Shine, had been offering up to
$50,000 of matching funds for a clean water well project. He wanted his
donation to go to Ethiopia and specifically to Living Water
International, the same country and organisation for which the Adams
girls were raising money. He heard their story and promptly sent them a
match for the $3,400 they had already raised, thus doubling their total.
With that encouraging push, they increased their production. “We were
actually also folding in the car on the way to school,” Isabelle says.
“Folding like crazy.” It paid off. Through decoration sales and
Eggemeyer’s matching funds, the sisters had collected enough to pay not
for half a well, but for an entire well.
India and beyond
After that year-end flurry, the family was ready for a rest, but it
didn’t last long. They’d soon set their sights on a well project in
India, something that would require $5,000 to build. Being old pros by
now, they got there, and then some. Ever since, they’ve continued
spreading the word about Paper for Water and the well projects they’re
helping to fund. Here’s a sample of what they’ve done in the past few
months:
* They’ve been on local TV.
* The sisters spoke at a UN Women’s conference.
* They received an Outstanding Youth in Philanthropy award.
* Isabelle and Katherine met the Indian ambassador to the US, Nirupama
Rao, when she was in town.
Most importantly, they charted an ambitious 10-well goal. Selling
their ornaments generally at three prices, $20, $40 and $55, the family
figured they would need to fold about 37,000 sheets of paper to make
that a reality. That meant community involvement would be key.
Fortunately, they’ve not had any trouble getting it, and their
fundraising has grown apace. Neighbours and church members have donated
time on the folding, as have friends from Providence Christian School,
which the sisters attend, and their classmates’ parents. They even got
students at the DaVinci Academy of Arts and Science in Minnesota to take
part through a connection Mrs. Adams has.
That support has enabled the girls to reach their extraordinary
six-figure number to fund the wells - almost $70,000 through origami
sales and donations and roughly $53,000 through matching funds, for a
combined $122,590. Every bit of it goes to Living Water International.
Next up, Katherine and Isabelle are hoping to create a
workshop-in-a-box that will teach other children how to make origami
that they can then sell themselves for charitable purposes.
“In the future, we’re thinking about possibly making this kit, with
an instructional DVD, paper [and] tassels,” Isabelle says. “And we’re
going to send it to schools and churches ... maybe Girl Scouts and
clubs, stuff like that, then maybe making a smaller kit for families.”
So can they get the kit up and running? They’re not experts with
those things, but they’ve relied on their faith to this point for the
undertaking, and that’s worked out fine.
“This entire project has been orchestrated, I think, divinely,” Mrs.
Adams says. “The most incredible things have happened. Every day when
they’re leaving the house, I’m like ‘something amazing is going to
happen today,’ and it does. I just feel like every day the whole
universe is conspiring to help us - that God’s hand is just in all of
this.”
- The Exchange
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