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Family’s Loren Foundation to launch in Canada

An international foundation will see a launch in Cranbrook and Canada later this year.
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An international foundation launched by a Cranbrook family will see a launch in Cranbrook and Canada later this year.

Lourdes and Butch Butalid, originally from the Philippines, started the Riza Loren Roxas Butalid Foundation, Inc, which is named after their daughter, who died 16 years ago.

“The reason why it has been delayed here is because it has to be registered with CRA [Canada Revenue Agency], so tax receipts can be issued,” Lourdes Roxas-Butalid said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission accredited the Foundation in the Philippines, Lourdes said, and now it has been accredited with the B.C. Registry as an extra-provincial foundation, meaning it is privately operated but under the auspices of the Province of B.C.

The main operation of the Foundation in Cranbrook will be to offer scholarships.

“We’d like to start with College of the Rockies,” Lourdes said. “It’s all transparent and accountable to all the donors — all above board.”

The Foundation will be launched in Canada on September 26, 2018, Loren’s birth date.

Loren died in an accident at her school in Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where the family was living, working and studying in 2002. Shortly after the tragic event, Loren’s friends started to raise money in her memory, and the Butalid family continued, using the “blood money” provided by the UAE government (in Arab countries, governments often provide a cash payment as compensation after accidental deaths, called “blood money” — a different connotation than the term in Western countries).

With these funds, the family launched the Riza Loren Roxas Butalid Foundation, Inc. in the Philippines and the UAE. From the outset, it was aimed at providing help and support to children.

“She loved children,” Lourdes said of her daughter (one of four children in the family).”They were in her heart, she wanted to help them, to work with them.”

“We’re keeping her memory and her dreams alive.”

Currently, the Foundation helps support the Bung-Aw and Dakit Elementary Schools in the Philippines, as well as two orphanages — one for boys, one for girls. Operating out of Cranbrook, the Foundation has also distributed hundreds of school bags and stuffed toys (with the help of the Salvation Army and colleagues from College of the Rockies) to children, as well as providing regular supplies of 2 kilos of rice and 2 cans of sardines to “candle-vendors” — street vendors who subsist on the streets of the Philippines by selling candles for use in churches.

Back in Cranbrook, the family is looking forward to the Foundation’s launch in Canada.

“It’s been a long journey,” Lourdes said. “While we prepare for the launch in Canada, we continue our work in the Philippines. Everyone has been supportive — Couples for Christ in Canada and friends at the College have been especially supportive.

“Loren is still in our hearts,” she added. “She has been there, helping us. And we’re just so happy that we’re moving forward.”

To help support the Riza Loren Roxas Butalid Foundation, Inc., go to the website, www.lorenfoundation.org.



Barry Coulter

About the Author: Barry Coulter

Barry Coulter had been Editor of the Cranbrook Townsman since 1998, and has been part of all those dynamic changes the newspaper industry has gone through over the past 20 years.
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