Every butterfly that fluttered into Sunday afternoon’s blue sky near East Sixth and Main represented five dollars, hope for an orphanage in a far-away land, and the hard work of a 15-year-old butterfly breeder.
The painted lady butterflies were carefully kept in triangle-shaped envelopes all afternoon during Light and Love Home’s open house. A circle was drawn near the fold to indicate where to keep fingers from crushing the delicate insect and, at the announcement, excited children, teenagers and adults crowded together to release more than 300 orange and white butterflies all at once.
“Since I was little, I have always been interested in butterflies and I haven’t outgrown them yet,” said Joshua Yu, the Grade 10 Sir Charles Tupper secondary student behind the fundraiser. “I want people to remember that every time you see a butterfly, it’s a symbol of hope and freedom.”
Yu is a member of the Go Spark club for teens that is run by Light and Love Home, a non-profit that works with the Church of God to operate community and charity organizations in developing countries. Club members are encouraged to help others and focus on doing good deeds in their community which, inevitably, led Yu to his idea of his butterfly fundraiser.
Light and Love Home bought six hectares of land near Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this past January to build an orphanage that will also include a school, community centre and a farm.
Since he can’t go to DR Congo himself due to school, Yu said he felt he could raise money for the cause by doing what he knows best — breeding butterflies. He even sells butterflies for release (think weddings) as well as larvae kits as part of his own Metamorphic Farms, which runs out of his backyard. “My dad is scared of them, but he has finally been able to hold one and my mom, she just adores them,” said Yu who also owns a pair of chameleons, five geckos (with two on the way), swordtail fish and one goldfish.
While he said he is happy to help raise money for the orphanage, he is also keen to help the local butterfly population which has declined due to local issues such as herbicide and pesticide use and the increasing lack of nectar flowers. Global problems include severe weather and, especially for the monarch butterfly, the painted lady’s bigger cousin, continued logging in Mexican forests that is reducing habitat. (Monarchs from Western Canada mostly migrate to California while those from eastern North America migrate to Mexico.)
Violin Chan, Light and Love Home’s vice-president of outreach programs, said she is thrilled young people are taking an interest in both their local and global communities.
“This is the reason Joshua came to me with his idea,” she said while looking at a drawing of the planned orphanage on the wall of the Light and Love’s home base.
“He started a fundraising project with goldfish a while ago, now it’s butterflies. Can you predict what he’s going to do in the future? You never know!”
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