Here's to New Beginnings

As you can read on our main site at TheBoliviaFamily.org, our organization has been around since 1981. That is when this handsome man, Baste Fanebust,


went to Bolivia to find his sponsor child, and finally found her after weeks of rummaging around in an unknown country. He ended up taking on the responsibility of 45 abandoned children in an equally abandoned orphanage in dire need of financial support. Over the years, the number increased steadily, and today we're up to 890 children in 17 day care and educational centres and 4 orphanages all over Bolivia. All but one are run in co-operation with the Salvation Army, with the Bolivia Family providing the financial support. As Baste used to say (he passed in 2005 leaving this organization to his sons, Øyvind and Frode): "The Salvation Army and me; we're one hell of a team..."

We've been on the web for at least ten years, but only in Norwegian. That is a language spoken by 0.08% of the world's population, understood by another 0.3% made up of Swedes and Danes, and complete goobledigook for the remaining 99.62%. It is a bit like publishing in sanskrit. So finally it occurred to us that perhaps it would be a good idea to put up an English site and blog as well...

Here is how we think this is going to work: A short presentation of and introduction to our organization is found on the web site. In this blog, we'll keep you informed on new and ongoing projects, show you some photos from our travels in Bolivia, tell you more about each orphanage and centre, etc. We'll also invite sponsors, co-travelers, volunteers and others to post.

We hope to make this an interesting place for you to visit. You are very welcome to comment here in the blog or to send us an email. And need I say that we are always looking for sponsors, large and small, for our children and projects..?

Best regards
Frode Fanebust