Young resident helps raise funds for Burbank Animal Shelter with origami art

Looking to raise money for the Burbank Animal Shelter, where her family adopted a dog, 10-year-old Catherine de Wolff led an effort with family, friends and residents of the Burbank Senior Artists Colony to create folded-paper animals to offer at the Burbank Farmers’ Market in exchange for donations.

“I combined my love of origami with my love of animals,” said Catherine, who lives in Burbank.

The project quickly exceeded her goals, said Sharon Springer, an employee of EngAGE, a nonprofit that provides arts, wellness and learning programs for low- and moderate-income seniors at the Burbank Senior Artists Colony and nearly three dozen other apartment communities in Southern California.

“Our goal was [to raise] $1,000 by Jan. 1, 2016, and we reached that goal on the first Saturday in November,” Springer said.

In two Saturdays at the market, one in October and one in November, the group raised more than $1,160. Catherine, along with her 10-year-old neighbor Simreen Kaur Sethi and Springer, presented a check for that amount to representatives of the Burbank Animal Shelter during a City Council meeting Monday night.

“We are so fortunate to have this group working with us,” said Stacie Wood-Levin, senior animal control officer. “Without community efforts like this, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”

Catherine said her family has adopted pets before, not just from the animal shelter, and wanted to help pets that weren’t fortunate enough to have homes of their own.

She partnered with EngAGE for the project and led origami-folding workshops that involved the colony’s senior residents. Catherine and Simreen, along with other children and the seniors, spent the months of September and October creating hundreds of paper swans, cranes, baskets, dogs, cats, frogs and other forms to offer donors.

Catherine de Wolff, 10, of Burbank, poses with her dog Nicho and a basket of origami on the front step of her family home.

(Tim Berger / Staff Photographer)

“They sold like hot cakes,” said Gisele Kirschbaum, one of the artist colony residents who helped Catherine. Kirschbaum added that she taught the girls how to make the baskets and helped with “cranking [the project] up a notch” by recommending the girls make the animals smaller so they’d be cuter.

Kirschbaum, 83, said she’s been making the paper baskets since she was a young child, even though she’s always had poor vision. Now legally blind, she said she has made hundreds of them, but now she goes by feel.

“It never stopped me,” she said. “It takes me forever, [but] I’m not a quitter.”

The folded paper crafts were given as thank-you gifts for donors who could contribute as much as they wanted. Catherine said that the most popular origami items were the dogs, cats and baskets, followed by swans and cranes. She said the largest donation was $20 for a single piece.

Catherine, who is a Girl Scout, said she plans to work with EngAGE next year to do another fundraiser, though it probably won’t involve origami. She said she appreciates all the people who supported the effort.

Carol Stensrud, 63, another of the artists colony residents who helped fold the origami creations, said she watched the girls seeking donations at the Farmers’ Market. She attributed their rapid success at achieving the fundraising goal to the fact that they brought “such energy and enthusiasm.”

“They could have sold a car,” Stensrud said.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland