2011 CNN Hero Robin Lim launches book at The Podium
Manila, Philippines - Robin Lim, the 2011 Cable News Network Hero of the Year, recently held a book signing reception for her 2009 novel, Butterfly People at The Podium.
Published by Anvil Publishing, Butterfly People is a fictional tribute to six generations of Robin’s Filipino family from Baguio, where she grew up and where much of this work of “magic realism” takes place.
Her grandmother, Vicenta Munar Lim, was a legendary hilot who greatly influenced her Filipino-American granddaughter’s views on medicine and midwifery. In 1992, her younger sister Catherine died due to complications from her third pregnancy. When Robin saw that even more technologies could not save her beloved sister, she decided to become a midwife.
She then moved to Bali, took the North American Registry of Midwives Exam and became a certified professional midwife. She started providing free health services for pregnant women in Bali in 1994.
“Mother Robin” or “Ibu Robin” as she is fondly called founded the Yayasan Bumi Sehat (Healthy Mother Earth Foundation) health clinics in Indonesia in 2003 that give free birthing services to everyone who needs it. She has helped thousands of women give birth in Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; as well as in earthquake struck areas in Yogyakarta in 2006, Padang in 2009, and Haiti in 2010.
