Who we are.
Where we started.
Where we're going.
Stephanie Withrow
Founder
Over 15 years ago, I launched Friends of Butterfly to support Butterfly Children’s Hospices at my children’s orphanages in China. Butterfly was the work of English nurse Lyn Gould, who moved to China with her husband Alan to open the country’s first children’s hospice.
Over the following decades, Lyn and her extraordinary team transformed how end-of-life care is delivered all across China. Butterfly now operates in multiple orphanages, communities, and cities across the country — and is 100% run and funded by its own Chinese nonprofit. We worked ourselves out of a job. Go us.
Rachelle Smith-Strole
Co-Founder
I met Stephanie on a medical volunteer trip to beautiful Malawi in September 2025. Together we supported American and Malawian doctors, nurses, and social workers diagnosing, treating, and vaccinating hundreds of children in villages near the capital. It was a joy to be part of the medical trip, but what struck us most was the hunger. The malnutrition. The despair in the eyes of mothers who couldn’t feed their children.
We learned a lot about the social, economic, and political causes of malnutrition in Malawi and the history of farming across Africa. We also met some remarkable young entrepreneurs tackling food insecurity through farming and social enterprise in their own communities. Go them!
Here’s how we can help.
We find good people doing good work who have:
We help them raise the funds they need to fulfill their sustainable social enterprise plan; then, we watch them shine.
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A clear vision and genuine heart for strengthening their own community.
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Local leadership — they’re already doing the work themselves.
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A sustainability plan that just needs a funding bridge to become self-sufficient.