Many orphans around the world do not have toys, comfortable beds or technology. That’s what students at Immaculate Conception Cathedral School learned when alumna Caroline Boudreaux visited the campus to talk about her organization.

“They didn’t have moms or dads,” one child said when Boudreaux asked the students how the kids in a video were different from them.

Boudreaux, co-founder of the Miracle Foundation, spoke to two assemblies of students, explaining what her organization does to help orphans and how they, as students, can assist children around the world.

Boudreaux started the foundation in 2000 when she and a friend visited India to meet the friend’s sponsor child. Boudreaux could not believe the conditions that orphans were in, and on Mother’s Day, she vowed to be the one to help those children.

The Miracle Foundation, based in Austin, Texas, goes to orphanages to assess the treatment and care of the children there. After the assessment, the foundation will give money to the orphanage for food for each child.

“I know something we can all do for them today,” Boudreaux hinted to the younger children in the Tuesday assembly. In response, they shouted back, “Pray.”

She gave the groups of students three things to do to help children without parents: pray, raise awareness and raise money. ICCS will collect change for the Miracle Foundation throughout October, tallying the number raised on the last Friday of the month.

According to UNICEF, there were 153,000,000 orphans worldwide in 2011. Boudreaux also told the students that only 1 percent of those orphans will ever be adopted. She said the average age of an orphan is 8 years old, which is too old to be adopted.

“The responsibility, the ability to respond, is on us,” Boudreaux said.

She told the students at ICCS that each generation will look back on the previous and question why more was not done to help those in need. Even the future children of the students sitting in the auditorium would one day question why children went hungry.

“You guys get to play a role in making sure children no longer suffer,” she said.

A seventh-grade student, Natalie Reinauer, came up with the idea of inviting Boudreaux to speak at ICCS when she was planning a social studies project. Natalie said her mother went to school with Boudreaux and so she decided to look up her and the Miracle Foundation. In the midst of her excitement about contacting Boudreaux to come visit, she forgot to do her fair project.

Natalie called Boudreaux “really inspiring” and said she looks up to her because she herself enjoys volunteering.

(Rick Hickman/American Press)

Rick Hickman