Setbacks and Plans

When I started writing this blog, I promised I would keep you all updated on the details of setting up the foundation. As you can see, I haven’t written anything for a while, and that’s because things are moving a lot slower than I thought they would.

After the big excitement of submitting the paperwork to the Charity Commission, everything… well... stopped.

The email you receive confirming your application states that your paperwork will be reviewed within two days. So I sat there expecting an update in a week. Then two weeks passed, and then four weeks had passed, and still nothing.

I think it was roughly five weeks after submission that we (the trustees) received an email apologising for the delay and advising that it could take up to six months for the charity to be registered. Or indeed, not registered if they require more information or evidence. So that has left me in a slightly tricky situation.

If you follow me on social media, then you’ll know that I was gifted a small sum of money – enough money to get me and Emily over to Indonesia – not for a holiday as we first planned, but to stay there for the foreseeable future.

But now I will be moving over to Sumatra without the backing of being part of a UK-registered charity. That means I can’t really fundraise, and so we can’t carry out our main goal of purchasing land to protect it from being sold off for palm oil plantations. Not yet, anyway!

So I have had to seriously ponder what to do in the short term. The conclusion I have come to is that if we stay in the UK, this small sum of money will get eaten up by bills and the generally insane cost of living here. It will, however, stretch much further in Indonesia.

In addition to that, I am really hoping that I can create a much greater social media presence once we are in Indonesia, which I anticipate will help my clothing brand grow and gain recognition.

So even without the Each One Wild Foundation being a registered charity, from a personal standpoint it still feels right that we leave the UK during the school holidays.

How I am envisioning the first few months in Indonesia is as a period of assessment. By that, I mean using the time to slowly understand the local communities within Bukit Lawang, make connections with wildlife authorities and officials in the country, gain more hands-on experience working with primates, and also figure out our longer-term plans, such as where me and Emily can see ourselves living – Sumatra, Jakarta, or somewhere else entirely, who knows!

But I think "network, network, network" and "learn, learn, learn" will be the main missions during those first few months.

There is some good news, though.

Our Each One Wild Foundation Indonesia NGO is likely to be registered before the UK-based charity. Although the UK charity will, once registered, be the lead organisation (so to speak), having the Indonesian NGO means that if, by some miracle, we come across someone who offers us the money to purchase land, we could actually do this legally through the Indonesian foundation.

I should probably add here that foreigners cannot actually purchase land in Indonesia (despite what some may tell you). So setting up an Indonesian NGO was always going to be part of the plan to ensure we were able to secure these habitats in a legally watertight way.

It’s funny that the Indonesian NGO will likely be registered quicker than the UK charity because, in my own experience, it’s not often that things in Indonesia happen quickly! But I’m certainly glad this is going to be an exception, as we really do need some way of moving things forward if the opportunity presents itself.

So that’s where we are as of 6th June 2026.

Me and Emily fly out at the end of July, and that's when the adventure begins!