Vietnam

Holt Vietnam recently hosted a three-day Roots to Grow training for 20 children, ages 14-18, in Dong Nai Province. The Roots to Grow training focuses on exploring nutrition, hygiene and sanitation, and budgeting presented through fun and interactive games, activities, meal preparation and cooking.

The recent training brought a lot of fun for the children and helped them to feel confident in the kitchen. They learned about how different foods protect your body, help you grow and give you energy. Through hands-on time in the kitchen, they also learned practical skills like handling kitchen knives, keeping utensils clean and even how to cook new recipes, like omelets, focaccia bread, bulgogi and apple crisp!

Without learning these essential life skills, it can be extremely difficult for children growing up in poverty to make their way as independent adults. Through the support of sponsors and donors, children in Holt’s programs learn life skills that they need to live healthy, successful lives.

Uganda

In Uganda, maternal and child health camps were recently held at four health centers as well as Holt sponsor and donor-supported early childhood care and development centers. These donor-funded camps offer crucial medical care to children, families and caregivers living in impoverished communities.

The recent maternal and child health camps served 8,250 children and 694 adults, providing interventions such as Vitamin A supplementation, deworming and health education through Holt’s Child Nutrition Program. Children and families also received treatment for prevalent conditions including malaria, chronic coughs, influenza and skin infections. Children with more complex health issues were referred to health specialists.

Thanks to the support of sponsors and donors, families receive one-on-one support and benefit from community events— like camps — that provide training to help them nurture their child’s growth and development. When children are healthier, they are more likely to meet developmental milestones, perform better in school and their families miss less work — enabling them to earn more income for their household!

China

In China, Holt’s family strengthening programs focus on education to lift children and families out of poverty. Child sponsors and donors provide the critical support needed to help children attend school for as long as possible — creating generational change for thousands of families.

During August, ten students from the Shangyi Family Strengthening (FS) program attended a five-day summer camp held by the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Jiangxi Province. Through the generosity of Holt donors, these students attended the summer camp free of cost.

The field trip included hands-on aeronautic and astronautic experiences, inspiring the students to develop their professional skills and explore possible career paths. For children in Holt programs, experiences like these help broaden their horizons beyond the limited career opportunities they witnessed growing up in impoverished communities.

Cambodia

According to Holt-supported students in Cambodia, donors and sponsors are making a big difference.

Recently, students were given an assessment through the Educational Support Program (ESP) in Phnom Penh. All students reported that Holt Cambodia’s ESP has helped them remain in school, with 86.96% strongly agreeing and 13.04% agreeing. Furthermore, almost all children (91.3%) who participated in the assessment strongly agreed and 8.7% agreed that ESP support has motivated them to pursue higher education.

In late July, 83 children in the ESP completed their Grade 9 National Diploma Exams and 71 successfully passed to Grade 10. Without support from Holt sponsors and donors, many of these children would have dropped out as early as in primary school. For children growing up in poverty around the world, education is the key to a brighter future.

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Sonith was just 4 years old when he started preschool in his small village in Cambodia. His family’s rice harvest only lasted half the year. During the other six months, they went without enough food…

Sonith felt the effects. He was tired, frail and often sick. But everything changed when Holt donors like you stepped in. Because of your support, Sonith began attending a Holt-supported preschool — a place where he could eat, learn and grow.

When he first arrived at school, he barely spoke. He kept to himself, missed days often, and his teachers worried. But slowly, things began to change.

To monitor his health and growth, Sonith received regular health checkups. He also received daily meals consisting of noodles, curry, porridge, fresh fruits and veggies. With each meal, he grew stronger and healthier.

Today, he’s thriving. He sings, plays games and even learned to play the trombone and flute. Sonith is now 5 and in first grade. He washes his hands before meals, brushes his teeth every night and attends school each day.

Once quiet and withdrawn, Sonith is now a confident and bright little boy!

Because of you, Sonith has the energy to learn, grow and chase his dreams.

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During story time, a class of wiggly 3-year-olds listened attentively while their teacher held up a book with colorful illustrations. But sitting in the corner was Gian, his head in his hands, fast asleep.

A new student, Gian came to preschool regularly but struggled to participate. He looked thin and was often sick. But Gian sat up attentively in his chair when it was time to eat. Noticing this, his teachers made sure the school nurses monitored his health.

Like Gian, many children in the Philippines arrive at Holt-supported early education centers underweight and malnourished. But because of your support for school lunch, children around the world receive the nutritious meals they need to grow and thrive.

The children receive rice, protein, vegetables and fruit every day — meals carefully planned by licensed dietitians. The staff monitors each child’s height, weight and mental well-being. Parents also attend nutrition education trainings to support their children at home.

After just three months of receiving daily, balanced meals through his preschool, Gian looked like a completely different boy!  His weight normalized, and he became an active participant in class. His teacher even shares that Gian now leads story time with confidence and enthusiasm.

Your support to feed students at school ensures Gian and his classmates have what they need for a successful future!

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Every day, Dembe walks into preschool with a big, confident smile. She sits in her seat, focused and attentive as her teacher writes on the chalkboard. When it’s time for a meal, Dembe eagerly fills her tray with a banana, a boiled egg and a warm cup of porridge, sweetened with a touch of sugar. Healthy and strong, she smiles as she returns to her seat.

But it wasn’t always this way.

When Dembe first started attending preschool, she was quiet and tired. She often fell asleep during lessons and didn’t have the energy to walk to school, so her mom brought her by bicycle.

But as time went on, everything began to change. Receiving daily nutritious meals, she became energized, friendly and alert. She started looking forward to school — eager to go each morning.

“Her appetite greatly improved, even for other meals prepared at home,” her mom says.

Because of you, Dembe and other children in her class are able to attend preschool and receive a nutritious meal each day. Holt’s nutrition team selects the menu, ensuring the foods they eat will help them grow. For many children in Uganda, the meal you help provide is the only meal they can count on for the day.

For Dembe, that daily meal made all the difference.

Once a shy and tired little girl, Dembe became happy and engaged — one of the best students in her class.

Thanks to you, Dembe and her classmates are growing up healthy, strong and full of potential.

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The post A Meal and a Smile Every Day appeared first on Holt International.

Last summer, Zixuan desperately needed a heart surgery. His family couldn’t afford regular meals for the family, let alone the cost of the surgery…

But then, sponsors and donors like you provided the funds for Zixuan to receive surgery!

After Zixuan returned home, his family did their best to provide nurturing meals. But they couldn’t afford enough food.

With a diet of rice, potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables, Zixuan wasn’t receiving the nutrition he needed. The family could only provide meat once a week. And milk was a rare luxury.

Because you support children’s education, Zixuan is attending school where he receives a healthy lunch each day. Your generosity ensures that Zixuan and his classmates have a full, balanced meal so they can grow and succeed!

Through the nutritious meals he receives at school, Zixuan is recovering well and becoming stronger each day. He says he looks forward to eating at school because of the wide variety of foods he gets to eat!

Your gifts to educate children go beyond school supplies and uniforms. They help children become stronger, healthier and ready to learn!

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Fourteen-year-old Thuy has been raised by her grandparents in Vietnam since she was a baby. Her grandfather works as a rice harvester — a job often affected by unpredictable factors like the weather. Thuy’s grandmother stays home to manage the household. Because of the family’s unstable income, sending Thuy to school wasn’t an option…

But then, thanks to you, things turned around. Because of sponsors and donors like you who have a heart for education, Thuy is now able to attend school! Her favorite subject is literature, though she enjoys all the subjects. She says your generosity inspires her to study hard — as her way of saying thank you.

 “Words cannot truly express how much this educational support means to me,” Thuy shares. “This support is not merely financial — it serves as a vital source of motivation that empowers me to overcome my difficult circumstances.”

Thanks to generous sponsors and donors like you, Thuy has everything she needs to succeed.

Her grandmother says, “The financial assistance arrived just in time for the start of the new school year, allowing us to pay [Thuy]’s school fees and purchase textbooks, notebooks, school uniforms, sandals and other essential supplies. She was overjoyed when she saw these items laid out on the table. You cannot imagine how much this support means to us.”

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Eight years ago, Ayana was left to care for her five children on her own. Living in a small village in Ethiopia, she became the sole provider for her family. She had no formal education or marketable skills. But Ayana was determined to provide for her family no matter what.

And thanks to you, she received the help she needed.

Ayana received small business training and resources to earn income for her family. Gifts of livestock and training to start a vegetable garden met her family’s immediate needs — ensuring none of her children would go hungry. And because of your support for their education, all her children can go to school!

“As a mother, being able to send my children to school without worrying about how to get them the supplies is a great blessing,” Ayana says.

Because of the poverty she lives in, educational support is even more critical for Ayana’s family. If paying for school depended on the economy’s ups and downs, her children wouldn’t be able to stay in school.

Ayana says her greatest desire is that her children can build a future where they are not limited by the struggles she has faced. “I want them to look to the future with hope,” she says.

Because of your incredible support, Ayana believes her family can rise from poverty and her children will be able to chase their dreams. Thank you for making their future so bright!

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Four-hundred-and-nine. Four-hundred-and-nine children evacuated from Holt child care centers in Vietnam in the spring of 1975. The most notable being the Pan-America “babylift” flight out of Vietnam on April 5, 1975.

The flight took off from Saigon, current-day Ho Chi Minh City, just before the city was overtaken by the northern Vietnamese army.

John Williams, who some years later served as Holt’s president, was working with Holt in Vietnam at the time of the airlift.

“All the kids had arm bands and leg bands on every limb to identify them so they wouldn’t get mixed up or lost,” John says of the children on Holt’s flight, most of whom were already matched with adoptive families in the U.S. at the time of the emergency evacuation.

“It was a long, long flight,” he recalls.

The plane flew from Saigon to Guam to Honolulu to Seattle to Chicago and finally New York. Beginning in Honolulu, and at each stop along the way, children united with adoptive parents who were extremely relieved to know their children had made it out safely. Because this wasn’t the case for everyone… An evacuation flight just days before — a flight the Holt children had nearly been on — tragically crashed several minutes after takeoff.

And just a few days later, John Williams – upon his return to Vietnam to help Holt staff evacuate – described the scene as “total anarchy in the streets — which were littered with uniforms and military equipment discarded by South Vietnamese soldiers fearing for their lives.”

This year marks 50 years since Operation Babylift, which was a defining and iconic moment in Holt’s history and legacy of caring for orphaned and vulnerable children.

But this flight was not the beginning of Holt’s work in Vietnam, and it certainly didn’t mark the end.

Holt Began Work in Vietnam

Holt first began working in Vietnam in 1972. The program primarily helped place children with adoptive families in the U.S. Because of the decades-long conflict in Vietnam, there were an estimated 900,000 homeless children in the country at the time.

Holt opened a child care center in response to this great need, providing the food and care that children needed while searching for permanent families for them through international adoption.

While some of these children had no known living parents, many of them did.

“Because of the conflict,” John says, “there were a lot of parents of children who were under great duress and thought their children would be better off in an institution because they were short of food and medical care.”

Realizing this, Holt’s team in Vietnam believed there should be alternatives or options other than international adoption for birth families to consider. Holt sought and secured a USAID grant to help reunify children from institutions with their birth families and empower families in poverty to continue caring for their children.

This is how Holt’s first family strengthening program began — in October 1974.

“The program was getting off to a very good start,” explains John, a former community development Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and USAID agriculture and refugee resettlement officer in Laos, hired by Holt to manage the program. By January 1975, John says the number of families in the program was significant. But as it became clear mid-to-late March that Saigon would soon fall to the North, the program was cut short — and Holt’s team on the ground realized it was time to make plans to leave the country.   

International Adoption Today

After the babylift, Holt couldn’t fully serve children in Vietnam again until 1989, when the Government of Vietnam invited Holt to help support and operate orphanages. In the ensuing years, Holt continued what they started before the babylift in 1975 — developing programs throughout the country that enabled children to stay in the loving care of their birth families.

International adoption from Vietnam to the U.S. occurred mostly off and on throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as adoption legislation and country agreements changed, and was suspended in 2008. But in 2014, Holt was specifically invited to reopen the international adoption program to begin finding families for older children and those with special needs.

Today in Vietnam, similar to in the 1970s, most of the children in orphanages have living parents or extended birth family. But the reasons they remain in orphanage care are complex, from neglect or abuse to poverty or other crises that keep their families from being able to meet their child’s basic needs.

Child welfare centers are meant to provide temporary care for children — with the first goal being to reunify each child with loving birth family. Domestic adoption is pursued for the children who can’t reunify with their birth family. And only once these options are exhausted, international adoption is seen as the best opportunity for a child to grow up in a family, and not an institution.

Huong Nguyen, Holt’s Vietnam country director, explains that the government has strict criteria for who can and can’t be enrolled into orphanage care. “First, [the government] sees if the child has any kind of relatives who can take care of them,” she says. “And even if a child does come to live at the center, they have a plan for reaching out to the family to discuss when they are able to reunite the child and the family.” 

Holt partners with both government-run and private child welfare centers across the country, providing caregiver trainings and other services to ensure the best care possible for the children who call these centers home.

While many of the children living in the centers are healthy and developmentally on-target, there is a much higher rate of children with disabilities and special needs living in institutional care than you’d find in the general population. The resources needed to care for a child with a disability are so much greater, and for a family already living in poverty, it can feel impossible. 

While orphanages in Vietnam have a high rate of children with disabilities, this reflects a higher overall rate of children born with birth defects and disabilities than other countries — particularly in certain regions of Vietnam. And the reason for this is tied to events from over 50 years ago.

While it was their grandparents and great-grandparents who lived through it, even generations later, Vietnamese children are still feeling the physical effects of the war. One region that was especially impacted is the city of Hoi An.  

Special Needs in Vietnam

Hoi An is a World Heritage Site and a beautiful coastal town that was once a significant Southeast Asian trading port in central Vietnam. It’s also the location of the Kianh Foundation – an incredible school for children with disabilities and special needs that’s supported by Holt sponsors and donors.

“The rates of disability are about 15 percent higher here,” says Hoang Pham, the program development director of the Kianh Foundation. And the likely cause is Agent Orange.

During the Vietnam War, American forces blanketed Hoi An and the surrounding region with the deadly chemical compound Agent Orange as they tried to fend off enemy troops. Thousands of innocent civilians died from exposure. And for more than two generations, women in areas once hit by Agent Orange have given birth to children with much higher-than-normal rates of physical and developmental disabilities.

But in this region with such high needs, there are few resources specifically for children with disabilities. That’s why the Kianh Foundation is so important.

The Kianh Foundation is an incredible, one-of-a-kind school for children with disabilities and special needs in Vietnam. Here, they learn life skills, have access to occupational and physical therapy — and grow and develop beyond what their families ever dreamed possible.

Every day, children with autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and more come from the surrounding area to learn. But there are many more who want, and need, to come.

“We have a wait list of about 200,” Hoang says. “And the school can hold just 80.”

Through word of mouth, parents hear about the Kianh Foundation and desperately hope their child can have a spot. Attendance here is one of the greatest hopes they can find for their child to thrive, and have as independent a life as possible.

Throughout Vietnam, some families know about Holt and come to us for help. But the majority are referred to Holt by the local child welfare officials. Since the end of the conflict in Vietnam, and the reunification of the country, Vietnam operates through a strong centralized government, with local branches in each province and city. Holt works closely with the government, often filling in the gaps to provide help.

“We support the parts that the government cannot,” Huong says. This can be Holt donor-funded programs like the Kianh Foundation, as well as individual families throughout the country who are living in poverty.

Family Strengthening in Vietnam

Life in Vietnam has dramatically changed in the 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. Economic reforms have led to greater prosperity for many people. But they have also increased disparities between rich and poor, rural and urban, and ethnic majority and minority families. Rural families often migrate to cities in search of work, putting children at risk of family separation, trafficking and exploitation.

Because of this, Holt’s family strengthening program – which began because of the needs children and families faced towards the end of the war – is active and strong today, serving more than 6,000 children and families across the country.

The Vietnamese government is quick to identify families living in poverty, however they often don’t have enough resources to provide the help children and families need to overcome it. This is where Holt Vietnam and Holt donors come in with education, single mother support and economic empowerment programs.

Helping Children Go to School

Helping children go to school is one of the foundational ways Holt donors help children in Vietnam. While some aspects of school are free to students, essentials like tutoring fees, school supplies and more can easily force a child to drop out sooner than they should. But with the right materials, and the caring oversight of a Holt social worker, thousands of children are excelling in school and on their way to graduation.

This begins at even the earliest ages, at Holt-supported daycares and preschools throughout the country. Many families living in poverty would never have the option to send their child to preschool, or even have a safe place to send their child while they go to work. And because of the nutritious meal these children receive each day at preschool, malnutrition rates have dropped significantly!

Older children receive the economic support they need to continue in their studies. And for older teenagers who may have already dropped out of school — a common occurrence for those who don’t pass the entrance exam for secondary school — Holt sponsors and donors help provide vocational training. By learning a trade such as hairdressing or running a food cart, they have the opportunity to learn a stable trade to support themselves.

And the support Holt donors provide stretches to help the entire family.

Strengthening the Entire Family

“They are the poorest of the poor,” Huong says of the families in Holt’s family strengthening program today. “They’re really in need of support, and we come at the right time, when they are at the risk of family separation or at the risk of children dropping out at school.”

Some families, out of desperation and poverty, will place their child in an institution if they aren’t able to provide enough food, medical care or other basic needs. But keeping a child in the loving care of their family is Holt’s biggest goal.

They are the poorest of the poor. They’re really in need of support, and we come at the right time, when they are at the risk of family separation or at the risk of children dropping out at school.

Huong Nguyen, Holt Vietnam’s country director

To do this, Holt’s family strengthening program comes around families living in poverty, equipping them with the tools to become self-reliant and independently provide for their children.

Once these families are identified with help from the local government, a Holt social worker will visit their home, get to know their family, understand their needs and begin to make a plan with them. For many families, this can mean helping them start small businesses or other income-generating activities like raising ducks or goats, opening a small shop, and more.

“We work with them to identify their potential and abilities, and make a business plan for them,” Huong says. “It’s very individualized. It’s a case management approach.”

In Vietnam, this often works in combination with providing education to their children. Or, if they are young, single mothers, Holt’s team in Vietnam also provides support and resources as they learn to care for their baby.

The result is that each family receives just the help they need to make their life better, overcome poverty and stay together.

While Holt’s work has grown and changed over the years, its goal and the dedication of Holt staff and donors have remained the same since John Williams first arrived in Saigon in October 1974 to help create Holt’s first family strengthening program.

Amazing Commitment in Vietnam

“The degree to which the staff, under tremendously stressful circumstances, did their job…” John trails off as he fights back tears, recalling the days leading up to the babylift in April 1975. “Their commitment was amazing.”

And this amazing commitment continues today from the Holt staff, and the Holt sponsors and donors who make Holt’s work in Vietnam possible — all for the sake of children and families in need.

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The post Fifty Years After the Vietnam Babylift, Holt’s Work Continues appeared first on Holt International.

Ethiopia

One of Holt’s local partners in Ethiopia, Sele-Enat, recently organized a Cancer Awareness Day in central Ethiopia, which many families in the community attended. Cancer is a public health crisis in low-income countries, including Ethiopia. Treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy are not widely available, leaving families with few options for their affected loved ones. Sele-Enat’s Cancer Awareness Day event brought families together and provided hope for many. Medical professionals specializing in oncology gave presentations and led discussions for the attendees.

Sele-Enat also recently launched a community awareness campaign for children with autism. Autism is widely misunderstood in Ethiopia, leading to a severe shortage of services for children with this condition. Sele-Enat is working to educate the community about autism and autism spectrum disorder to promote inclusivity and understanding for all children and families. Raising awareness and providing education helps equip caregivers with the knowledge to offer the best care for every child and their needs.

Our partner, Sele-Enat, cares for children with autism and other developmental disabilities at their orphanage. They receive nutrition and medical support through Holt’s Child Nutrition Program, education support, as well as recreational and experiential activities to meet their social and psychological needs. Inclusive education is a priority for Holt and Sele-Enat to ensure children with disabilities and other special needs have access to learning environments in which they can thrive. Through the autism advocacy, Holt and Sele-Enat work to raise awareness about autism spectrum disorder with the larger community. This helps to reduce stigma, inform parents, caregivers and educators about the needs of autistic children and ensure families are accessing education and other services they may need. This type of advocacy is essential to preserve and strengthen families, and it would not be possible without the support from Holt sponsors and donors.

India

Holt-supported students enrolled in higher education programs in Pune and Aurangabad recently took a field trip to explore careers in manufacturing. Through Holt’s local partner organization, Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), Holt sponsors and donors help support these students and join BSSK in their efforts to empower young people growing up in difficult circumstances in India.

The field trip included hands-on experiences and allowed students to observe vehicle production, robotic automation and other industrial technologies up close. The field trip inspired the students to develop their professional skills and explore possible careers paths. For children in Holt programs, experiences like these help broaden their horizons beyond the limited career opportunities they witnessed growing up in impoverished slum communities. This is especially true for many girls in India, who face greater gender discrimination and also marriage at a young age.

With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, BSSK has worked to change that since 1979. Through Holt sponsorships, educational workshops, career field trips and other support, children receive the tools they need to succeed and thrive.

Uganda

Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of 16.2 years. And in the rural villages where Holt sponsors and donors support children, more than 30 percent of children ages 6 to 9 have never attended primary school.

Education is expensive in Uganda. The cost of school fees, books, supplies and uniforms is too high for families living in poverty. In rural areas, schools may also be too far for some children to walk to, and few families can afford boarding school fees.

Thanks to Holt sponsors and donors, our team in Uganda recently provided scholastic materials and school uniforms for 904 children at Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) centers. ECCD teachers also received teaching materials for the term, and the schools received food items such as fortified flour, sugar, eggs and bananas for mid-morning meals.

Your generosity not only provides nutritious meals each day for children in need — but also helps them focus in school, where both attendance and grades have improved!

Colombia

Holt partner Bambi in Colombia has served children and caregivers in an impoverished area of the city for more than 22 years, thanks to sponsor and donor support.

Bambi works to keep children with their birth parents, offering interventions and support to lift families out of poverty and prevent children from being separated from their families. Bambi provides vulnerable parents and caregivers with access to education, job training and childcare to help them gain financial independence and create a safe environment for their children. Caregivers can enroll in vocational courses, such as baking, sewing and cosmetology, or receive support to complete their secondary education. Parents and caregivers also have access to financial literacy and business training, weekly counseling and parenting groups with staff psychologists.

To ensure these caregivers can complete their education and training, Bambi provides 24/7 flexible childcare with health and nutrition screenings and early childhood education for children under age 5. Recently, Holt sponsors and donors helped to ensure the children in the daycare program received wellness and development checks. These evaluations help caregivers cater to the needs of each child and set goals for their development.

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

Vietnam

In Vietnam, 500 children living in Holt-supported child welfare centers celebrated Tết, thanks to Holt child sponsors and donors who gave gifts for Christmas and New Year holiday celebrations!  Tết Nguyen Dan, commonly referred to as “Tết,” is Vietnam’s most significant and traditional celebration, marking the arrival of the Lunar New Year. Tết is celebrated according to the Vietnamese Lunar Calendar, with the official holiday lasting around seven days.

It was a happy celebration, full of festive foods like bánh chưng (sticky rice cake) and kho (simmered caramel sauce dishes). The children enjoyed singing, dancing and playing games. And in the spirit of celebration, the child welfare centers were decorated with red banners and the vivid colors of kumquat trees and peach blossoms. It was a truly joyous occasion!

Cambodia

In late January, Her Excellency, the Deputy Provincial Governor of Battambang Province — who also serves as the Chairperson of the Provincial Women’s and Children’s Consultative Committee (WCCC) — visited our foster care program in Battambang. This was an honor for Holt’s team in Cambodia, as our programs have been highly recognized by the Cambodian government. Representatives from the Department of Social Affairs (DoSVY) and the District Governor of Sangke District of Battambang Province also visited.

Holt supports programs in four rural provinces of Cambodia, serving some of the country’s most vulnerable communities. Many families in Cambodia live in poverty, particularly in rural areas. With the pause in U.S. federal funding announced in late January, some of Holt’s programs in Cambodia have been directly affected — in particular our foster care, kinship care and family reunification program piloted in partnership with Save the Children. As USAID funding remains uncertain, donor support has become more crucial than ever in helping to ensure children can remain in nurturing foster or kinship families instead of orphanages, and children already living in orphanages can reunite with their birth families in Cambodia.

India

In the bustling city of Bangalore,  Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT) remains steadfast in its commitment to empowering the next generation in India.

With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, VCT provides a safe place for children of migrant workers to go during the day. The daycare is free for these families, providing children with a nourishing lunch and a critical early education while they gain the skills needed to transition to a more formal school setting. The migrant daycare program also helps prevent families from separating from one another due to the stresses of rural-to-urban migration.

India is home to 139 million internal migrants, including children. For children living in impoverished communities, VCT child development teams often provide support and guidance as they grow up — keeping them on track with their studies and helping them navigate the different challenges they face.

With donor support, VCT also holds special celebrations for children in the daycare program — children whose families can rarely afford anything extra like a party.  In January, the children celebrated India’s Republic Day with pride and creativity!

Philippines

Kaisahang Buhay Foundation (KBF), our partner agency in the Philippines, was invited by the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) to help develop a new foster care training curriculum. Holt helped found KBF as a local organization in 1976, and in the mid-1980s, KBF introduced a model of foster care that provides a more nurturing, one-on-one care alternative for children growing up in orphanages. Today, KBF is recognized as a leading child welfare organization and a cornerstone of alternative care for children growing up in care systems in the Philippines, providing guidance and insights on best care practices.

Ultimately, Holt and KBF’s goal for children in foster care is to reunite with their birth families or, if that is not an option, to join families through domestic or international adoption. Through family reunification efforts, in recent years, our staff in the Philippines have helped an average of 20 children rejoin their families every year. In some situations, birth families may lack the resources or ability to provide a safe home environment for their children. When this is the case, foster families continue to provide one-on-one care, attention and development that children need while Holt and KBF work to unite them with a permanent adoptive family. In collaboration with the NACC, KBF is providing ‘training for the trainers’ — i.e., empowering trained foster families to train new foster families, which furthers alternative care advocacy and ensures children receive the loving care and support they need.

China

It was a happy Lunar New Year in China! The celebration welcomes both the arrival of spring and the new year and is recognized as the most important holiday in China. Hundreds of millions of people travel within China to reunite with their families in their hometowns or to enjoy sightseeing and festivals. Lunar New Year is celebrated in many of the countries where Holt works — from Seollal in Korea to Tết in Vietnam — and worldwide, 2 billion people celebrate Lunar New Year each year.

In Holt child welfare centers in China, Lunar New Year was a happy occasion! The windows and doors were beautifully decorated with red paper cuttings and festive paintings. It was a lively celebration, filled with vibrant lanterns, firecrackers, delicious food, dancing and performances! Holt sponsors and donors made the occasion even more special by sharing gifts with the children in Holt programs to celebrate Lunar New Year. Thank you for making this a celebration to remember!

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