So, you’re curious about Bolton’s Naturals?

Dale and Linda met and fell in love in their late 30s.

She was a nurse and a natural leader with a huge heart. He was a visionary with a dream to live simply, have adventures, and help the poor.

They were madly in love. But on one point, they disagreed.

Linda knew that they could help more people if she pursued her dream of starting a business. Dale was not so sure. He thought they’d have to compromise their values.

So Linda bided her time, waiting for the perfect entrepreneurial opportunity. In the meantime…

It soon became clear that she was on the brink of building a business with the potential to change their lives.

So, they made an agreement as a couple. It wouldn’t just be any business. It had to be a social enterprise, set up to give profits away to the extreme poor. Linda agreed wholeheartedly.

In their 50s and 60s, Dale and Linda together built an award-winning company from the ground up.

North of the border, Dale and Linda are well known as magnesium educators and the founders of Natural Calm Canada.

In 2012, the couple expanded the business by creating a topical magnesium brand, Bolton’s Naturals. 

Linda loved how topical magnesium helped with her muscle pain. And Dale… well, Dale became one of our most creative topical magnesium enthusiasts.

How did the Boltons get involved with Thrive for Good? Well, they founded it.

In 2004 Dale and Linda took an economy plane and a very bumpy bus ride to Blantyre, in Malawi. They were going to see an orphanage they’d helped raise funds to build.

It was a life-changing trip. Dale and Linda saw that the children were safe, loved, and learning. But at most meals, all the children had was ugali, the local equivalent of white rice. Fruits and vegetables were just too expensive. 

“Why don’t you grow your own food?” Dale asked. But no one at the orphanage knew how.

So, he set out to learn sustainable, organic farming by studying it in Kenya. He wanted to prove to himself that he could grow an abundance of nutritious food almost anywhere, with little water, no chemicals, and at a very low cost.

Once Dale was trained, he set about creating a training center in Kitale, Kenya, where community leaders could come to learn what Dale had learned. In a few months, they have the skills to grow sustainable, nutritious food with almost no money at all. Those leaders then go out to towns, churches, schools, and prisons to teach others.

That’s the foundation of Thrive for Good. It’s a sustainable model that’s helping to end extreme poverty by growing “Life Gardens.”