Introducing our new monthly giving community: Food Every Day!

Be the reason a child eats — for just 50 cents a day.

When you join Food Every Day, you become the reason a child gets to grow up healthy and strong — and in many cases, the reason they get to stay with their family.

Families living in poverty work hard to keep food on the table — but too often, it’s still not enough. And when crises like job loss, illness or drought strike, the need becomes even more urgent. Parents struggle to provide even the most basic necessity for their children: food every day.

For a child facing hunger, food isn’t just a meal — it’s a lifeline.

When you provide Food Every Day, you will:

Make a Lasting Difference — By extending your impact beyond a one-time gift, no child will ever wonder where their next meal will come from.

See Your Impact — Get monthly text and email updates about children who are thriving because of you!

Stay Connected — Receive our print newsletter featuring heartwarming stories and photos from around the world.

Give with Ease — Automatic contributions make giving smooth, ensuring no child is left waiting and hungry.

As a member of FED, you ensure a child has the daily meals they need to grow, learn and dream. You will nourish their mind and body, help them catch up in their development — and bring their joyful giggles back!

You Can Help a Hungry Child

When you give Food Every Day, you not only help a child learn, play and grow — you help keep their family together.

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The post Giving Them Food Every Day appeared first on Holt International.

Thailand

In April, Holt’s partner in Thailand, Holt Sahathai Foundation (HSF), held Songkran celebrations for children and families in orphan care and family strengthening programs. Songkran — one of Thailand’s most important holidays — is traditionally a time for family gatherings and honoring elders. While the official celebration spans April 13-15, many, including HSF, extend the festivities for an entire week. Communities typically enjoy the holiday with water fights, traditional dances and delicious foods like mango sticky rice and khao chae, flower-scented rice.

Through the generous support of sponsors and donors, HSF is able to provide special celebrations for children and families in need — creating meaningful, enriching experiences they’ll never forget.

To celebrate, HSF organized a variety of interactive activities that brought excitement and joy to children and families. Children played board games and outdoor games together, encouraging teamwork and creativity. Volunteers also led English lessons covering topics such as greetings and naming animals. The children eagerly participated, raising their hands to answer questions with enthusiasm.

HSF also held cooking classes where children learned to make traditional Thai desserts like bua loy — rice flour balls simmered in sweet coconut milk. HSF staff say that the cooking activities not only taught practical skills but also helped children grow in confidence.

India

Holt’s partner in Pune, India, Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK) recently organized a vibrant summer camp program for children ages 10-15. Children who receive services through BSSK live at the center or in impoverished communities in and around Pune.

Children enjoyed painting, dancing, storytelling, drumming circles and more. They even learned to make sprouts bhel, a flavorful dish with mung bean sprouts, mango and spices.

Some summer camp activities were led by older children — a valuable opportunity for them to develop confidence, leadership and teamwork skills. According to BSSK staff, the camp was a memorable experience filled with bonding, learning and fun.

Holt’s partner in Bangalore, India, Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT), is making strides in providing educational support. For children living in impoverished communities, VCT child development teams provide vital support and guidance as they grow up. With encouragement and academic support, children stay on track with their studies and navigate challenges with confidence.

Recently, VCT organized a parent meeting to support families with students who are facing stresses from school life, academics and family issues. The evening covered a range of topics, including improving communication among family members, addressing behavioral challenges and developing healthy coping strategies for managing stress.

Holt sponsors and donors help support children and join BSSK and VCT in their efforts to empower young people growing up in difficult circumstances in India.

Uganda

One of the key pillars of Holt’s work in Uganda is early childhood care and development (ECCD). On April 30, Uganda celebrated National Children’s Play Day — becoming the first country to establish such a day since the UN resolution for an International Play Day.

National Children’s Play Day raises awareness about the transformative power of play in a child’s life and its critical role in healthy development. Children at ECCD centers in Uganda benefit daily from indoor and outdoor play equipment that supports their physical and cognitive development. On this special holiday, caregivers gave children extra time to play — and joined in the fun themselves!

Holt’s Village Health Teams (VHTs) also recently led food demonstrations at ECCD centers to further parents’ knowledge of nutrition, food preparation and safe handling practices. These presentations emphasized the connection between good nutrition and children’s physical and cognitive development. Nearly 1,700 caregivers across three districts participated.

Thanks to the support of sponsors and donors, families receive one-on-one support and benefit from community presentations — like food demonstrations — that provide training to help them nurture their child’s growth and development.

Colombia

Through Holt’s partner La Casa de la Madre y el Niño in Bogotá, Colombia, sponsors and donors help provide high-quality, nurturing care for orphaned and vulnerable children. As the largest institution registered to facilitate international adoption in Colombia, La Casa brings more than 75 years of experience to its work with children and families.

La Casa provides care for children living at Casa Imagina, a residential home for older children ages 10-17 who have special needs or face other barriers to adoption. Casa Imagina offers a warm, family-like environment with nourishing meals, health care and education. Through a new partnership with IdeaArte, children at the home can also now enroll in educational art classes, helping to grow their creativity and confidence.

Recently, four children entered Casa Imagina to prepare for adoption, and three children left to join permanent, loving families. Caregivers at the home receive specialized training to advocate and care for children waiting to join adoptive families. Once children are matched with families, caregivers help prepare them for the transition ahead. With one-on-one support, the children learn about culture, climate, language and, for many, what it means to be part of a family.

Become a Child Sponsor

Connect with a child. Provide for their needs. Share your heart for $43 per month.

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The post Notes from the Field: May 2025 appeared first on Holt International.

Right now, Holt International is facing an urgent financial shortfall of $1.4 million. If we don’t close the funding gap by April 30, we will be forced to make heartbreaking decisions — reducing the number of children and families we serve and cutting programs that provide vital care and resources.

You are probably aware of the pause the government has placed on international funding through USAID, which many humanitarian programs overseas rely on. In many places, Holt is now one of the few organizations — if not the only one — that can help children in need.

But first, we must overcome this critical shortfall.   

Your support will ensure no child is turned away from the love and care they need.

Educational Support at Risk for Children in Mongolia

Overlooking Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is the city’s largest garbage dump. Here, a whole community of children and families survive on what they can find in the refuse — whether bits of food they can eat or items they can sell. They live in makeshift homes on the edge of — and sometimes inside of — the dump. For children growing up in such dire poverty, you help to provide a special sanctuary — a place where they can take a warm shower, eat a nourishing meal and receive an education that will help them escape a life in the garbage dump.  

Your support provides school supplies, nutritious meals and social work support to help more than 200 children attend this special place called the Red Stone School. Instead of gathering and selling refuse in the garbage dump, these children are receiving enrichment in school each day.

But without your support to overcome the shortfall, children in Mongolia may lose the critical support they need to stay in school.

Vital Medical Care for Women and Children in Uganda

Every day, 300 infants and 20 mothers die from preventable causes in Uganda — and the rate is even higher in rural areas. Infant and maternal mortality is often attributed to delays in seeking care, delays in proximity to a health facility and delays in receiving adequate treatment.

But through your faithful support, you have helped make it possible for our team in Uganda to host Child Health Days for pregnant women and children living in rural communities where care is less accessible. You’ve provided the resources for village health workers to go door-to-door in communities to screen mothers and children for malnutrition, provide essential supplements and vaccinations, offer resources and education and encourage prenatal care and nutrition.

Recently, through this outreach program, you helped provide lifesaving care for one sick mother and her child who was dangerously underweight.

Approximately 150,000 children and 5,000 pregnant women are provided life-changing medical assistance in Uganda each year. Without the funds to continue serving pregnant women and infants, we’ll be forced to reduce critical medical services in Uganda.

Nurturing Foster and Kinship Care for Vulnerable Children in Cambodia

In Cambodia, thousands of children are growing up in orphanages. Many of them have living relatives who could care for them if given the resources. In recent years, with funding from USAID and other grant organizations, Holt began working alongside other organizations to help move these children from institutions into more nurturing care settings.  

Through kinship care, Holt works to reunite children with their birth families — if not parents, then aunts or uncles or grandparents who can provide the kind of loving, attentive care that children just don’t receive in institutions. Your support helps provide the tools and resources these families need to care for the child — such as food support, school supplies, counseling and even job skills training for the adults.

Not every child has a family member who can care for them, however. For these children, Holt developed another alternative — foster care. Foster care ensures a child has a nurturing, safe and family-like home where they can grow and develop while they wait to reunite with their birth family or join a family through domestic adoption. Through your generous donations, you have helped support children so they have everything they need to thrive while in the care of a loving foster parent — from food and clothing to critical medical care.

Due to a loss in federal funding, this program is now at risk.

Without your help overcoming the $1.4 million funding gap, orphaned and vulnerable children in Cambodia may lose the nourishing food, safe shelter and nurturing care they need to thrive.

Emergency Medical Care Around the Globe

For children around the world with urgent medical needs, medical care isn’t an option — it’s essential.  

Many children are sick when they first enter orphanage care, which can often be attributed to underlying medical conditions, special needs, chronic hunger and the overall impoverished conditions they lived in before coming into care. Upwards of 40% of children are malnourished when brought into care and approximately 25% of children come into care with a medical need or disability.

Your generosity ensures that children who need urgent medical interventions, like heart surgeries or cleft palate surgeries, receive the lifesaving or life-changing care they need. No child should go without the critical care they need and deserve. That’s why we must bridge this gap together.

Every contribution, no matter the size, brings us one step closer to ensuring no child or family is turned away because of the funding shortfall. Through your compassion and generosity, we can continue working toward a world where every child can grow and thrive in a loving, secure home.

Help a Child in Greatest Need

Give emergency help to a child who is hungry, sick or living in dangerous conditions. Your gift will provide the critical food, medical care, safety and more they need when they need it the most.

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The post No Child Should Be Turned Away appeared first on Holt International.

Every day at preschool, Faith walks through the food line and fills her tray. She can’t help but smile as she rushes back to her seat to eat.

It’s because of Holt donors that Faith and the other children in her class received this nutritious meal! And this meal is critically important, because for many children it’s the only one they can count on each day.

The children who attend this preschool in rural Uganda wake up in the morning, often skip breakfast, then walk a long way to school. Once at school, they struggle to concentrate past their rumbling tummies…

That’s why the food you provide them is so important. Not only does it take away hunger, but it also helps them concentrate in school.

Most days, this meal is made up of nutritious porridge, a hard-boiled egg and a banana — food full of critical protein, fat, carbohydrate, potassium and more. The menu is carefully picked out by Holt’s nutrition team, and is full of the nutrients that will nourish young children, helping them to learn and grow.

And parents and teachers can see the difference it makes!

“Faith has gained weight compared to how she was before enrollment with Holt,” says her mom, Harriet. “She looks healthier and happier now than before.”

Holt donors provide nutritious food across several preschools in Uganda, serving over 1,500 preschoolers! Each of these children is overcoming or staving off malnutrition. And not only that, but school attendance and performance have gone up!

Thank you for feeding precious preschoolers like Faith. You’ve given her the gift of a full tummy, and a successful year at preschool.

Help Feed a Hungry Child at School

Your gift provides nourishing school meals that help a child stay focused, energized and ready to learn.

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The post Her Best Meal of the Day appeared first on Holt International.

When a family doesn’t have enough food for daily meals, they can feel like there are few options.

Holt provides children with free, daily meals in schools, preschools and daycares — and even emergency food packs to families in crisis. But what about for everyday meals at home, and the long-term? The best solution is one that’s accessible to families in need, and sustainable over time.

Farming and gardening are incredible ways for families to have better access to food. However, most farming families sell everything that is produced on their farms to generate income so they can buy other essentials. Often, they subsist on mostly rice or other inexpensive staples that they purchase. Instead of eating the food that they grow on their farms, they sell it for much-needed income.

But then they miss out on so many key nutrients growing right in their backyard!

To ensure growing children receive the vital nutrients they need — and increase overall household food security — Holt donors provide the support families need to start personal kitchen gardens.  

Kitchen gardens are small gardens grown close to a house that grow small amounts of fruits and vegetables directly for the household’s use. And while they can be unassuming, they can make a powerful impact on the overall health and wellbeing of children and families in need.

What does a kitchen garden look like?

Kitchen gardens can vary in size and shape, and are used to supplement a family’s diet with fresh nutritious food! Kitchen gardens can include tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, peppers, squash, beans, herbs and more.

They can be grown in many places, such as:

• Windowsills or indoors by a window
• In garden pots or boxes on porches
• On rooftops
• On small plots of land or yards
• On a trellis or vertical planter
• In alleys or between trees
• In raised garden beds
• In areas around a water source
• On hillsides

Why is a kitchen garden a great option for a family living in poverty?

These small gardens can greatly support a household’s nutrition intake of nutritious fruits and vegetables. They are easy to start, and sustainable to continue! Many kitchen gardens use grey water — household water such as the leftover water from washing dishes, laundry or rainwater — and don’t require a lot of added work or cost from the household to maintain. They often use compost from  household wastes, such as dinner leftovers, and are easier to protect from animals, environmental issues and pests.

What difference can a kitchen garden make?

Kitchen gardens can improve children’s nutrition and growth! When families have kitchen gardens, we see an increased intake of nutritious foods for children. These kitchen gardens can also help families be resilient to market pressures. For example, growing their own tomatoes eliminates a family’s need to purchase expensive tomatoes from the market.

Kitchen gardens sound so great! Why don’t all families have them?

Some of the hurdles for families to start kitchen gardens include knowledge and the costs of seeds. Many families also have to build protection around their garden to protect it from animals, like goats. Additionally, some families live in water-scarce areas and may have limited access to water or limited ability to capture or store rainwater.

That’s why Holt often provides seeds, tree seedlings, gardening supplies and more to help families start kitchen gardens — as well as the training they need to garden successfully. With the right tools, training and support, we’ve seen again and again how families can overcome food scarcity and improve their overall nutrition because of their kitchen gardens.

In Ethiopia, families and children are eating more nutritiously and are grateful for the seeds and support. In Cambodia, families who are raising livestock as part of our donor-supported income-generating programs are also growing small kitchen gardens, with children doing better than ever before by eating protein-packed eggs and nutritious vegetables. Kitchen gardens are changing families’ lives, all around the world!

With regular access to fresh vegetables and fruits, children are growing healthy and strong and families are becoming more food secure!

Lift a Mom Out of Poverty

When you give a gift of chickens, a garden or a sewing machine, you will bless a mom and her children.

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The post Kitchen Gardens: A Small, Sustainable Way to Prevent Hunger appeared first on Holt International.

Holt Uganda’s Child Health Days have an incredible impact, providing vitamins, deworming treatment and more to over 165,000 children since they began.

In rural, impoverished communities in Uganda, too many children don’t get the medical care they need. They don’t go to the doctor when they get an infection, they miss out on routine childhood vaccinations, and many are terribly malnourished due to intestinal parasites. 

But thanks to Holt donors, this is changing. 

Holt Uganda now partners with the Ugandan government each year to hold four Child Health Days! And at these events, Holt donors help provide the vitamins, deworming medication and more to help children heal! 

In just five years, it’s become one of Holt’s farthest-reaching, most impactful programs — improving the health of over 165,900 children! 

Each health day provides routine catch-up immunizations, vitamin A supplements, deworming medication, malnutrition screening, general health check-ups, prenatal vitamins for mothers, treatments of common illnesses, and health and nutrition education. 

“In just five years, it’s become one of Holt’s farthest-reaching, most impactful programs — improving the health of over 165,900 children!” 

Already, the effect on individual children, their parents and the community is obvious. The number of malnourished children in these target communities has greatly reduced. So many more mothers are receiving pre- and post-natal care, and more. 

Holt Uganda hopes to serve even more this year — bringing better health and changing the lives of children in need. 

Help a Child in a Big Way

Your gift to our Where Most Needed fund will provide critical help to a child in need.  

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The post Health for Hundreds of Thousands: Child Health Days in Uganda appeared first on Holt International.

In 2023, you made a powerful difference in the lives of nearly 1.54 million children, families and individuals around the world! You helped children with special needs receive life-changing surgeries, therapies and medical care, empowered women and girls — and kept them safe from trafficking — through education and job skills training, provided emergency food and medical care for children suffering from malnutrition, and helped children grow up in loving families instead of orphanages. Thank you for your heartfelt and generous giving to help orphaned and vulnerable children in 2023!

In 2023, you provided direct care and services to 476,966 children. Each of these services was tailored to a child’s individual needs — whether they lived with their family but needed help affording the fees, supplies and uniforms to go to school, or whether they lived in an orphanage and needed social work support to reunite with their family or join a family through adoption. This number also includes services provided to help youth and adult adoptees and their families already living in the U.S.

In total this past year, Holt helped 241 children join permanent, loving families through adoption with the support of generous donors like you. This number includes 149 children who joined families in the U.S. through international adoption, 90 children who were adopted domestically in their birth countries overseas, and two children who joined families domestically in the U.S. Overall, 95% of children adopted internationally were older than age 5, part of a sibling group or had at least some minor special needs — and 61% of children placed internationally were older than 5 at the time they joined their families. In 2023, our Thailand special home-finding program for older children and children with disabilities or special needs continued to see success — and with your support, we launched a similar pilot program in the Philippines, with social workers traveling to meet, assess and advocate for children who have long waited to join the loving, permanent families they deserve. We are especially thankful to the donors who funded special needs adoption grants that helped make it possible for many children to be a part of a family.

With generous donor support, 3,553 adoptees and families received support from Holt’s post-adoption services team in 2023 — a number that surpassed 2022 by about 1,400 adoptees and families. While this shows greater success in outreach to those needing support, it also underscores the tremendous need for post-adoption services among those touched by adoption, from help with citizenship and accessing file copies to help facilitating a birth family search to counseling for adoptees struggling with identity and parents seeking help to support their child. Over the summer, Holt celebrated 40 years of Holt Adoptee Camp — a unique program designed to build adoptee community and help adoptee youth explore their identity alongside campers and counselors who share the unique experience of growing up adopted. This year, 178 campers participated in Holt camps across the country. And in November, during National Adoption Month, Holt leaders had the opportunity to share about the vital importance of post-adoption services as part of a documentary on international adoption that aired on PBS. Emphasizing that adoption is a lifelong experience, this short documentary produced by Empowered and hosted by actress Meg Ryan will air on PBS stations throughout 2024.

Around the world, adoption remains the last, best option for thousands of children to have a permanent, loving family. But before we ever pursue adoption for a child, we first strive to help them grow up in the loving care of their birth family, whenever possible. For children living in orphanages, this often means a long social work process to identify their immediate or extended family and explore the possibility of reunification. And in 2023, with donor support, Holt teams around the world helped reunite 428 with their birth families — a significant number when you consider the time and resource-intensive work that goes into identifying relatives and ensuring children can thrive in their care.

But everywhere we work, our first goal is always to prevent family separation in the first place. And with the generous support of sponsors and donors, 34,466 children who were at risk of separation were able to remain in the loving care of their families in 2023. With support tailored to each individual child and family, you helped provide everything from clothing, warm bedding, safe housing and school supplies to livestock for nourishing food and income. In 2023, 6,761 individuals also participated in Holt-supported economic empowerment programs, including job skills training, education in how to grow gardens or tend livestock, financial literacy training, village savings and loan groups and other innovative programs that empower families to generate a stable income and independently support their children.

In 2023, you helped almost 10,000 more children and young adults attend school than in the prior year! Your generous giving helped expand early childhood care and development programs and add preschools to government-run schools in Ethiopia, prevent girls in India and other countries from dropping out of school to marry, and provide school supplies, uniforms and fees for thousands of children who wouldn’t otherwise be able to go to school. You also supported a program that provides educational assistance to children aging out of orphanage care in the Philippines — helping them earn high school diplomas and university degrees. By empowering children through education, you also help protect them from trafficking, abuse, child labor and other dangers that increase exponentially when children are out of school.

From a breakfast program for schoolchildren living in impoverished communities in Haiti to emergency, calorie-dense food for malnourished children in rural Ethiopia to gifts of cows, goats and gardens that help families produce their own food, you helped nourish hundreds of thousands of children and families around the world in 2023. With global inflation still a chronic issue — and regional conflicts that further compounded the problem — food security remained a major concern for thousands of families living in poverty and children living in under-resourced orphanages this past year. Thankfully, Holt sponsors and donors met this need — providing a staggering 2,229,616 meals to hungry children and families in 2023.

Since Holt first developed our model of foster care in Korea in the 1960s — a model that has since been replicated in numerous other countries — Holt sponsors and donors have continued to support programs that provide this more nurturing alternative to institutional care. In Thailand, you helped support our local partner’s well-established foster care program for children who are waiting to join adoptive families or reunite with their birth families. In China, you supported family-like group homes for children living with HIV or other special needs. In Ethiopia, you supported one of the country’s first foster care programs, through our orphanage partner in Addis. And in Cambodia, you helped expand a pilot foster care program — placing the first child with a family in Phnom Penh in April 2023. Around the world, Holt sponsors and donors also helped care for children living in orphanages, providing essentials like diapers and food, caregiver support and training, medical care and more.

The medical and health care you provided children in 2023 included everything from routine childhood vaccinations to lifesaving surgeries. In Haiti, you helped provide medical check-ups for over 750 schoolchildren living in impoverished communities. In Vietnam, you helped expand Holt’s child nutrition program (CNP) to a new daycare facility— delivering nutrition screening and deworming medication to more than 250 children, and growing the number of children in the CNP program in Vietnam to 1,470 children. Through the maternal and child health program in Ethiopia, you helped reach 167,318 children, including 960 infants and children who were treated for malnutrition at the NICU and stabilization center. And for one special 8-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, your generous giving helped him travel from Mongolia to India to receive the life-changing surgery he needed to walk.

In 2023, you and your fellow donors gave 4,125 Gifts of Hope to children and families in need around the world. You gave food for hungry children, shoes to keep children’s feet warm, dry and protected on their long walk to school, an egg a day to provide vital protein to growing kids, and livestock likes goats, chickens and cows to nourish families and provide vital income when they sell the offspring. You provided school scholarships for children who might not otherwise go to school, as well as the books and supplies they needed to succeed. You gave the gift of nurturing foster care to children waiting for a permanent, loving family, and urgently needed orphanage supplies like diapers, cribs and blankets. You empowered single mothers to earn income for their family through the gift of job skills training or a small business microgrant. You gave Christmas and birthday gifts to children whose families or caregivers can’t afford to provide gifts on these holidays. And you gave to Holt’s Where Most Needed fund to make it possible for our staff and partners in the field to meet immediate, vital needs of children and families that might otherwise go unmet.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity in 2023! You truly made a huge impact in the lives of children and families around the world, and we are so grateful for you.

The post See the Difference You Made in 2023 appeared first on Holt International.

Many children in southern Thailand eat mostly salty packaged noodles and other processed food, and they don’t eat vegetables. As a result, many of them are surprisingly malnourished — they’re often sick and don’t have the nutrients they need to develop and grow. 

That’s why a huge way to help children there is by giving them healthy foods! 

Recently, 196 preschoolers went to a special learning garden supported by Holt in their community. It’s lush and beautiful and full of fruits and vegetables! After learning about cucumbers, rambutans, mangos, cashews, mangosteen and lots of other tropical fruits and vegetables, these children got to eat some! 

They gathered around with the vegetables they harvested, made a simple batter and cooked vegetable tempura with help from their teachers. 

“These veggies tempura are the yummiest in the world!” said a 4-year-old boy as he ate the meal with his friends. 

The best part is that each child then went home, excited to tell their parents about these new foods. 

Another way Holt sponsors and donors help children and families in southern Thailand is by giving them the garden seeds, tools and training they need to have their own gardens at home! So not only do these kids want to eat vegetables now, but vegetables are accessible in their own homes. 

Already, their preschool teachers say that children have made this same vegetable tempura at home with their families, and they’re eating a wider variety of vegetables in general. This provides such a critical boost to their health and nutrition! 

With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, these children are growing healthy and strong and overcoming malnutrition. 

Feed a Hungry Child

Children are hungry because of skyrocketing food prices. But just $1.50 a day feeds a child who would otherwise go hungry.

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The post “I Like Veggies!” appeared first on Holt International.

When 5-year-old Marya first came to the hospital, she was more than hungry — she was dangerously malnourished.  

Her tummy, hands and feet were swollen. She was weak and tired, and had constant infections that wouldn’t clear up. Her 7-year-old brother, Abai, was in the same condition. And it was all because of a lack of food…

Their parents did all they could to provide for all five of their children, but at a certain point, a malnourished child can become too ill to even feel hungry or eat. That’s when their parents knew they needed help. So they scooped up Marya and Abai and walked from their village to Holt’s Mother and Child Hospital in Shinshicho, Ethiopia.

When they got there, the children were rushed down to the lower level of the hospital, and back to Holt’s malnutrition rehabilitation unit.

A Rise in Childhood Hunger

Right now, around the world, more children than ever are going hungry. Food prices continue to soar after the pandemic, and poverty is at an all-time high. In Ethiopia, widespread drought and internal conflict add to the lack of food security. Not only are children getting dangerously thin and sick, but even their long-term growth is being stunted.

But the good news is these children can be treated — and their stunted growth reversed.

Julia Hayes is Holt’s manager of nutrition and health services. Last summer, she traveled to Ethiopia to visit children in Holt’s nutrition programs.

“Nutrition is so important to be able to provide that catch-up growth to get them on a level where they can thrive into adolescence,” Julia says, “and eventually into adulthood.”

Helping Children & Families Overcome Hunger

That’s why Holt’s donor-supported food programs are more important than ever — and beyond simply giving food to hungry children, many of these programs get to the root causes of hunger for families around the world.

Holt goes out into local communities to hold nutrition screenings and nutrition classes for parents. Struggling families receive livestock such as chickens, a goat or a cow — which then provide vital daily protein and nutrients to growing kids. Parents learn how to grow gardens, either in extra plots of land near their homes or even in “kitchen gardens” using waste water from their kitchens to grow little household gardens. Across Holt-supported orphanages and schools, children receive nutritious daily meals.

These initiatives are sustainable solutions to help fill children’s empty bellies in the long-term. But for children who have already gone without food for a long time, the response is more critical.

Helping Malnourished Children in Ethiopia

Children in Ethiopia are often first identified as malnourished by Holt Ethiopia health extension workers — trained health professionals who are also trusted members of the community. And the earlier they identify malnutrition, the less impact there is to a child’s development.

“This is a big way Holt Ethiopia makes sure that we are reaching the communities that we’re serving,” says Julia. “We’re not just putting up a health post and expecting people to come to us. [These health extension workers] know the families and communities best and are really the heart of the work.”

So when a health extension worker comes across a child who is severely malnourished, they often refer them directly to the malnutrition rehabilitation unit at Holt Ethiopia’s Mother and Child Hospital.

Holt’s Nutrition Treatment Center

This unit at the hospital is composed of several rooms: an entry and meeting room, a recreation room of toys for the children, and then two in-patient rooms with two beds each. One room is for children with more mild cases of malnutrition, and the second room is for the more critical cases. This second room is where Marya and Abai received the lifesaving nutrition care they needed once admitted.

In the rehab unit, they first received a specialized low-protein, milk-based formula to help them stabilize. Then, they gradually transitioned to a second specialized formula with higher protein and energy content, before finally graduating back onto solid food. Their treatment took months, as the medical staff were careful not to overwhelm their fragile bodies.

But even after just a few weeks, Marya and Abai began to get their energy back — and they noticed all the toys and activities in the room next to them.

“The play and interactive materials are so that the children can play, engage and get rid of depression while staying at the center,” says Selamawit Girma, a Holt Ethiopia social worker. “The opportunity also helps caregivers open their eyes about how to stimulate their children at home through play, in addition to the nutrition services.”

Marya and Abai’s parents stayed with them at the hospital during their recovery — switching off between being with with Marya and Abai, and their other three children at home. And during that time, Holt helped provide them and other parents staying at the hospital with nutritious food so they could feed themselves while they were there as well.

“It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for our children to be alive today without the treatments they have received.”

“It would be impossible for us to stay and treat our children at the hospital for those months, had it not been for something we could eat while staying there,” Marya and Abai’s parents said.

Recovering at Home

While the children’s time there was long, it was exactly the critical and careful care they needed to recover. And today, Marya and Abai are reunited with their siblings at home, where they are healthy and have the energy once again to play and go to school! For their parents, the gravity of their situation is not lost, and they’re so thankful for the care they received.

“It would be very difficult,” they said, “if not impossible, for our children to be alive today without the treatments they have received.”

Marya and Abai, like all children who spend time at the malnutrition rehabilitation unit, have had several follow-up visits from Holt health workers at their home to check on their growth and nutritional status, as well as to provide any other needed support to the family. 

“There’s a community connection for those treated at the hospital,” says Julia. “Holt isn’t just there in the hospital, but we provide follow-up and assessment in the home setting.”

Follow-Up Care at Home

At these home visits, Holt Ethiopia health extension workers identify any risk factors within the home — anything from what and how much a child is fed, to how the food is stored or prepared. Holt Ethiopia also uses a story-based flipbook to help educate families about healthy foods, how to prepare them, and how to increase their access to food through gardening or raising livestock.

While these home visits can be a vulnerable experience for the families, it’s so helpful for the health extension workers to gather more insight into the family’s health and nutrition and to develop strong relationships with the families they support. And because they care so much about their children, families welcome these visits as well.

“We are grateful that we’re able to provide what we can to get them back on their feet,” says Julia, “and educate in the long-term to keep them from ever having to return to the hospital.” 

While Marya and Abai have now been out of the hospital for several months, they’ll continue to be monitored during these home visits to ensure they continue to grow and remain healthy. More than anything, their parents are so grateful to have them back home — where they’re smiling and thriving within their care.

Feed a Hungry Child

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The post Fed Back to Health appeared first on Holt International.

When Atlan’s family received a big bag of noodles, he immediately picked it up and hugged it. That’s how much even the littlest children are thankful for emergency food deliveries, made possible by Holt donors. 

This children and families who received these deliveries live at the edge of the garbage dump in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. They truly live hand to mouth, sometimes even rummaging through the refuse to find their next meal… That’s why the gift of an emergency food delivery was so important! 

“These families regularly experience food insecurity,” says Paul Kim, Holt’s director of programs for Mongolia who was there to help deliver the food. 

With funds from Holt donors, social workers in Mongolia bought and brought them bags of noodles, rice, flour, bread, cooking oil, milk and more. 

“Any additional food they can get helps them feed their children and themselves. The families were all very grateful, and expressed their thanks to us.”

Paul Kim, Mongolia Program Director

“Any additional food they can get helps them feed their children and themselves,” says Paul. “The families were all very grateful, and expressed their thanks to us.” 

This emergency food delivery included rice, flour, cooking oil and more. And as you can tell by the photo, Atlan was so happy to get a bag of noodles! 

These food deliveries help to fill empty bellies, and give these children and families the dignity of safe and nutritious food. 

Feed a Hungry Child

Children are hungry because of skyrocketing food prices. But just $1.50 a day feeds a child who would otherwise go hungry.

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The post Food Deliveries to the Garbage Dump in Mongolia appeared first on Holt International.