“I love to pray, and covering the children and the work of RUHU with prayers is one of the reasons I believe God called me to BR.”
Siska Larson is a board member with a big heart for helping others. She has served on our board since 2020. “I learned about Beautiful Response from my dear friend Lori,” Siska explained, “but learned more about it when I served as the Mission Committee Chair of Carmel Presbyterian Church (CPC) for four years.” Siska’s time with BR has not been her only nonprofit experience. She worked with NGOs while living in Indonesia for many years. Her focus is in Carmel, CA where BR began. “I offered to maintain connections with Carmel supporters and host gatherings to help do so.”
Siska had great insight when it came to answering the question, “What makes BR unique?”. She responded, “Every organization is unique in some ways. However, BR helps support the work of RUHU that involves not only meeting the basic living needs of children, but also their education, and spiritual growth.” Beautiful Response strives to make a lasting impact beyond the years students are in school. We strive to set up students at RUHU for success throughout their lives. Siska continued, “One significant difference is that more than 90% of the funds that BR receives goes to the children at RUHU. This is important since a lot of other NGOs spend their funding on salaries for the US-based employees.” One of our goals at BR is to keep our internal costs as low as possible to enable us to best serve our partners.
For Siska, her involvement at Beautiful Response is very personal. “I love to pray, and covering the children and the work of RUHU with prayers is one of the reasons I believe God called me to BR.” She went on to say that BR’s mission is important to her “simply because Jesus cares for little children, so we must too. He also talked a lot about the mark of Christians, which is to care for the poor.” At Beautiful Response, we hope that all our donors can feel personally connected to our mission to support and empower our partner organizations.
When asked what the biggest challenge BR faces is, Siska responded, “There are a LOT of needs and good causes out there, so a lot of people are already stretched thin in their giving…and the [current] economy has not helped either.” Siska continued, ” Another [challenge] is the fact that there are larger, more established organizations that people have supported for a long time and have built a strong bond and trust with.” As a smaller organization, we strive to connect personally with our donors and communities. Our hope at BR is that our donors connect with our mission, find our cause good and trustworthy, and can see the impact of their compassion and generosity.
