The Caring Family Foundation is a three-pronged initiative that started with child poverty, donating 1.14 million meals during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Soon after, Patricia expanded to working with victims of domestic abuse in Brazil and the UK: more than 30,000 women and children have been supported across both countries. The final effort, to which most funds are directed – £3.1mn to date – is the restoration of the Amazon rainforest. The three pillars are a reflection of Patricia’s “organic” approach to philanthropy. “I didn’t plan it – it just happened,” she says. The decision to support domestic abuse victims was the result of a call from a friend telling her about women trapped at home during lockdown. An initial care centre was set up in São Paulo, the first of many the Foundation supports in collaboration with organisations including Advance, Solace and Latin American Women’s Aid. The reforestation pillar was established after a similar conversation between Patricia and Katie Beeching, an ambassador for the Foundation, after images of the Amazon ablaze were circulated in 2019-20.
The Foundation’s work in the Amazon is as much about supporting the Indigenous communities who live there as reforestation – 2.3 million trees and counting. “We’re not just planting trees, we’re transforming lives,” says Patricia, who was raised by her grandparents in the south of the country. “We teach them how to plant so that they become farmers.” Adair Pereira Duarte is manager of the Forest Landscape Restoration Programme at SOS Amazônia, one of the Foundation’s partner NGOs. “The commercialisation of [fruit and vegetables grown by these communities] has become an important factor for women, who sell them at local markets,” he says.
Patricia Caring pauses at the threshold of her reception room as though waiting for permission to enter. As co-chair of The Birley Clubs, the collection of members’ clubs owned by her husband Richard, she is a regular at functions and glittery galas. But discussing “important” things – family, her private life and work as a philanthropist – exposes a rare anxiety in her glamorous aura. She sinks into a tasselled sofa and downs a bottle of Acqua Panna water. “Have a sweet,” she says, pointing to a tray of cakes and Läderach chocolate.
A glance around the room offers a brief education on the Carings’ respective histories. Richard, the billionaire businessman behind a hospitality empire that AA Gill once called the “restaurant equivalent of LVMH” – Sexy Fish, the Ivy Collection, Le Caprice – is felt in the grand columns and imposing fireplace. Patricia, 44, a Brazilian former property developer known by almost everyone as “Mrs C”, lives in the tropical motifs, velvet sofas and bespoke Pierre Frey carpets. The couple married in 2018, an event that garnered some tabloid scrutiny (Patricia is Richard’s second wife). Four children and six Yorkies later, they are a picture of South Kensington affluence.
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