Serial entrepreneur Kathy Wong (pictured) managed to hit her big goal of retiring at 45 thanks to her previous business, a corporate branding agency she had run for 19 years.
“For nine years I lived the dream, tending to my beautiful garden, huge veggie patch where I could have fed a small village and travelling the world,” she shared with Anthill.
However, the 53-year-old had a life changing moment when she got a download one morning last February telling her she had to make a difference. She became determined to change the world around her.
Spurred into action by one statistic
“When I discovered there are 300 million children in the world with no shoes, some dying from the diseases obtained by being shoeless and many unable to access education as schools don’t allow children without shoes to attend, I knew I had to help!
“I have had a good life and I knew it was my time to give back. I could not have my own children so I always knew I would do something to help there too,” she went on to share.
Kathy had found her mission. She used her savings to start Moeloco (which translates to ‘dream crazy’), a socially conscious business that sells thongs (flip-flops) with inspirational messages on the soles and for every pair sold, donates canvas shoes to a poor child in Kolkata, India who badly needs them.
Each pair comes with one of four messages: ‘Dream crazy’, ‘I’m happy’, ‘live love’ and ‘I am peace’. So if you walk down the beach rocking a pair of Moeloco flip-flops, you will leave one of these printed into the sand for someone else to see and get inspired… literally leaving positive footprints.
What is Moeloco aiming for?
Apart from helping the poor children, Moeloco is also helping their poor mothers, who feel disempowered by being unable to properly provide and care for their children, with the poverty eradication programmes operated by its charity partner, The Hope Foundation.
Kathy added that empowerment of the young girls is also an important part of her mission with Moeloco, highlighting that Kolkata, where the orphanages they are supporting are, is the most dangerous place in the world for women.
She is now looking to build Moeloco into a global commercially successful business model that puts as many shoes on children feet, millions of them, and also even provides jobs.
“My ultimate dream is to build a factory that makes the shoes we give to the kids and creates job opportunities too,” she revealed.
In seven months of operating so far, Moeloco has already put almost 1,700 shoes on kids’ feet, brought nine retailers on board and also built an incredible community of volunteers and supporters.
