A 4-year-old stands on a busy sidewalk in Vietnam. She sees a group of strangers and walks up to them. Wordlessly, she holds up some pieces of paper and goes around to them one by one. They’re careful not to make eye contact with her. They shoo her away. She goes back to the street where her mom is waiting, and they keep walking, looking for more people to approach.

This was Tú’s life from its earliest stages. At just 4 years old, she began selling lottery tickets alongside her mom. Selling lottery tickets earns very little income, and the tickets hold very little value for the people who buy them. As a result, selling lottery tickets is akin to panhandling. People buy them out of compassion for the person selling them.

And out of desperation, parents often recruit their young children to sell them — hoping to invoke more pity, compassion and sales.

No one chooses this life. Tú’s mom sells lottery tickets because she has few other options. Her husband is no longer in the picture. She lives with her two children and four other family members in a charity house built by the government. Their entire household income is $473 USD a month, which includes a salary Tú’s uncle earns from his construction job — and the $4 a day that Tú’s mom earns from selling lottery tickets and also shelling cashews. As she grew, Tú helped support her family — also contributing ticket earnings of about $4 per day. But the family’s income barely covered the needs of seven people.

Tú is 16 now, and on a rainy day in December our Holt team walks down the trail leading to her house. Their home is surrounded by ponds used for raising and harvesting shrimp and fish. A narrow stretch of grass between the pond and a concrete wall leads to their tall brick home. Everyone is soaked by the time we reach it.

Tú comes to greet us. She’s bubbly and welcoming — her cute bangs framing a face with bright eyes and a warm smile. She’s excited to tell us about herself and how Holt donors have been helping her.

Dropped Out of School

A few years ago, when she was just 12 years old, Tú decided to drop out of school.  

“I went to school, but I don’t achieve good grades, I didn’t achieve a good outcome,” says Tú, “that’s why I decided to not continue school.”

This is a common occurrence for children living in poverty who aren’t doing well in school, and who don’t have the support they need to continue. If a child is part of a wealthier family, their family may pay for additional tutoring — or even go to a private school where they’ll receive more support in their education. But this is not an option for children from poor households. Many children simply drop out and start working to support their families.

This was Tú’s reality.

Tú decided to continue selling lottery tickets with her mom. But she soon found that an already difficult sell was only becoming harder.

“I was happy because I could accompany my mom,” Tú says about selling lottery tickets. “But I was not happy because, you know, the sell is very slow.”

Over the past several years, the Vietnamese government has discouraged the buying and selling of lottery tickets — especially with children. While not a viable option for people to rise out of poverty, when children engage in the practice, it’s also essentially child labor. Suddenly, Tú and her mom weren’t selling as much. Trying to abide by the government’s new laws, people weren’t buying lottery tickets anymore.  

As we speak with Tú in the back, open-air room of her house, the rain begins to pound even harder — making loud thumping noises on the tin roof. While we’re talking, her brother comes home from school. Although he’s 14 now, he’s small and appears to be about 8 or 9 years old. This is due to severe malnutrition. When a child doesn’t have enough food to eat, they’re often stunted in their growth. In impoverished communities across Vietnam, many children have little more than rice to eat. They rarely get enough protein and other vital nutrients. And they quite often go without meals. Both Tú and her brother have likely skipped many meals through their childhood. Their mom is tiny, too. Less than 5 feet tall and extremely slight. This is what poverty looks like.

And poverty, it seemed, is what Tú was destined for.

Holt Vocational Training in Vietnam

Tú had a sixth-grade education. And now her plan for making money wasn’t going to work, either. But Tú was smart and determined — and she kept her eye out for any opportunity to escape her situation.

“When I was selling the tickets, I found I could not earn much income,” Tú says. “But I saw people in town who did nails and hair in a salon.”

This caught her attention. What if she could do this too? It would certainly be a more stable and higher-paying option than lottery tickets. But this would require training, which required money — money her family didn’t have.

Thankfully, around the world, Holt provides just this kind of support for young adults and parents struggling to support their children. In Vietnam, Holt’s economic empowerment program helps parents and youth just Tú.

Soon, Holt donors stepped in and began making Tú’s dreams a reality.

The local government had identified Tú’s family as needing help meeting their basic needs. As in many of the countries where Holt works, the government of Vietnam has a strong relationship with Holt — and often works in partnership with our local team to serve children and families in need. The government reached out to Holt and shortly afterward, a Holt social worker, Ms. Phum, came to Tú’s house. She sat down with Tú and began talking about options for her future. Since she wasn’t going to school anymore, she’d have to plan for her future – plan for a life where she could rise above poverty.

Tú shared about the hair and nail salons she’d pass in town, and how she dreamed of working in one someday.

“I like it. I love it,” Tú says. “So I decided to do it.”

Ms. Phum enrolled Tú in Holt’s donor-funded vocational training program. Through this program, youth like Tú receive job skills training to help them find a job and earn a sustainable  income. Some choose to open a food cart. Others raise animals or learn administrative skills. With the generous support of donors, Holt helps provide the startup costs for a business or, as in Tú’s case, the tools and training required to learn the vocation.

Holt helped connect Tú with a woman in town who owns a salon. Every day, Tú rides her bike 15 minutes into town to observe, learn and progress in her skills. After just six months, she has already mastered the basic skills of manicure and pedicure, simple haircuts, hair washing and more — and will soon end her apprenticeship and begin working as a professional.

A Beautiful Future for Tú

During our visit, we leave Tú’s house and travel to the salon to see her in action.

The salon is a small shop on a busy road that is good for business. A ramp leads up to the glass-fronted room, and inside it feels clean and well set up. Several salon chairs and tables for doing nails fill the small room.

Tú’s instructor owns her own salon and is successfully running her business. She has long, auburn-dyed hair that stretches long down her back. Her mannerisms are soft and patient. She is training several other girls in addition to Tú. She sits down and allows Tú to paint her nails, serving as the model for her pupil to demonstrate her skills.

Tu smooths the pink polish over her trainer’s fingernail, hunched over her hand in concentration. She quickly and fluidly performs the motion, and the result is perfectly painted nails.

Tú is so proud of herself. She is also very thankful to everyone who helped her achieve her goal — especially the donors who funded her training.

“I would say thank you very much for your support,” she says, when asked what she’d like to say to them.

By the end of this year, her training should be complete. She will need additional support to start her business — and hopes that Holt donors can help cover these costs as well.

“After my graduation from the vocational training, I want more tools that can help me to open a small shop,” Tú says. “But I’m thinking about how I can get the money to purchase those things.”

As we finish up our time with Tú at the salon, an elderly woman shuffles up to the front of the salon. She’s selling lottery tickets. She wears a pointed hat, covered by a yellow poncho over her clothes. She lingers, asking again and again if anyone from our group wants to purchase one. Her eyes are sad. After a short, polite “no thank you,” no one engages with her. She shuffles away. 

The timing is almost poetic — as if this elderly woman symbolizes the difficult future that is no longer Tú’s. Instead of becoming like this woman, and her mom, Tú has another option. She’ll have the skills and opportunity to make her own way in the world and overcome poverty. As she gives her clients beautiful hair and nails, what’s most beautiful is the difference she’ll be making for her own life.

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Yalena peeks out the side of her princess castle — a sheer, pink-and-white cylindrical-shaped tent with a miniature kitchen set and a family of stuffed animals to keep her company. Monica, her mom, grabs her foot, making her giggle and scoot back to safety.

Monica is 22. Yalena is 4. They live alone in a one-bedroom row house in Darien — a small, lakeside village tucked into a low-lying valley between the looming, dense-jungle mountains of southwestern Colombia. In the late 80s and 90s, Darien was one of the most dangerous places in Colombia.

Once a sleepy agricultural village and popular vacation spot for the country’s wealthy elite, Darien quickly became a war zone as Pablo Escobar and his drug cartel bought up many of the million-dollar homes overlooking the lake and began luring recruits from the impoverished local community — offering them more money than they had ever seen to work as hitmen and spies.

Today, Darien is once again a peaceful place where women and children stroll the cobblestone streets under sun umbrellas and grade-school kids roam free on bikes. The violence of the 80s and 90s is past, but definitely not forgotten. No one seems to want to say Pablo Escobar’s name — like it’s bad luck if they do, or might somehow summon him from the grave.

Monica’s home is small, but perfectly designed for a 4-year-old princess, with princess bedding and a princess castle and a purple polka-dot princess guitar that Yalena is now learning how to play. Monica has built her home, and her life, around her daughter. She loves everything about her. “Even the tantrums,” she says. And she wants her to have everything she never had.

But two years ago, she had nothing to give. Literally, nothing.

When Holt’s local partner first met Monica, she and Yalena were living in a single room with nothing but a mattress for the two of them. Monica and her husband had recently separated, and he offered no support. Sometimes, her ex-husband’s mother — Yalena’s grandmother — would sneak her some milk and sugarcane for Yalena.

But many nights, they went without food.

Monica has glowing hazel-brown eyes and wavy reddish-brown hair that she wears long with a deep side part. On this hot and humid day in Darien she has on skinny jeans, a tank top and sandals that show deep divets in her red-polished toenails — a genetic condition that makes it look like she has an extra toe on each foot. Growing up, her parents couldn’t afford anything but sandals for Monica, and kids at school bullied her because of her toes. Now, she doesn’t care, she says. She laughs when people comment.

Although lighthearted and playful with her daughter, Monica seems much older than her 22 years. She’s serious and direct and shows no emotion about her past. The program coordinator for our local partner, a psychologist named Germán Vasco, says that’s common for people who’ve been through trauma. She has internalized her feelings.

When Monica was in the 8th grade, her dad decided it was time for her to quit school. Although public school is free in Colombia, he stopped paying for her supplies and uniforms. “According to him, it wasn’t a worthwhile expense,” she says flatly. He forced her to start working at a shop he owned in Darien.

At 17, Monica left home. She got married to a man she met in her father’s shop and by 19, she was pregnant. When her marriage broke up shortly after Yalena was born, she supported her daughter by herself on the 28,000 pesos, or about $9, she earned each day working in a nearby sugarcane plantation. Often, at the end of the day, she would be covered in pesticides. But before picking her daughter up from the daycare center across town, she would go home to wash the pesticides off the surface of her skin.

Monica calls the pesticides “poison.”

“I didn’t want to pick my daughter up with poison all over me,” she says.

When Holt’s local partner knocked on her door, looking for children and families who needed help, she hesitated. She felt unsure of herself and how the program could help her. But “they told me that whenever I was ready, I could go fill out the paperwork and there was always an open door for me,” she says.

When she got up the courage to open the door, and step inside, a whole new world opened up to Monica. A world she would ultimately create for herself and her daughter, with the support of Holt’s local partner — and the kindness and generosity of sponsors.

The Kidnapped Generation

Two years ago, Holt began looking to return to a country, and a continent, where we had not had a presence since the 1980s. The year before, in 2016, the local government signed a peace treaty with the largest guerrilla group in Colombia, the FARC, bringing an official end to more than five decades of an ideological civil war between the Colombian government, communist militants and paramilitary groups — groups that as the war went on became increasingly engaged in, and funded by, drug trafficking.

As the war came to an end, life in many ways went back to normal in Colombia. Families displaced by the fighting began to return home and Colombia became a safe place to travel again. But for the families who lived through the war — a war in which four times as many civilians as fighters died— normal is a relative term.  Everyone has a scar. Everyone has a story.

Ana Maria Fernandez, Holt’s Colombia program director, was living in Bogotá in the late 80s and 90s when the drug cartels, guerrilla fighters and local government fought for control of the city. In 1991, she left the country for a time — escaping the bombings that occurred every few days. When she returned in 1996, she remained captive in her own city. She never drove beyond city limits for fear of being stopped and killed or kidnapped for ransom — what she calls “normal kidnappings.”

“We were called ‘the kidnapped generation’ because we weren’t able to leave the cities,” she says today.

Although the cities experienced violence and bombings, the worst of the fighting took place in the mountains and jungles — in rural communities where families would be caught in the fire between the extreme right and the extreme left. Although many people tried to stay neutral, the guerrillas reigned terror on their communities — driving many of them to leave their homes and livelihoods, to leave everything, behind.

“In rural areas, they would just grab your child,” Ana Maria says of the guerrilla groups. “Weeks later, that 15-year-old boy was killing people.”

Many families fled because they loved their children too much to risk them becoming child soldiers. “If families saw their 13- or 14-year-old girl or boy being recruited, they would just leave whatever they had,” says Ana Maria. “Nothing was more important than having their children.”

For Ana Maria, this sentiment is personal. When she witnessed her brother get kidnapped from the same car where she sat with her young daughter, she thanked God that they didn’t take her daughter. And that, miraculously, her brother was able to escape the same day.

Between 1985-2012, more than five million civilians fled to Bogotá and other cities — creating the world’s second largest population of internally displaced people. But in the end, it didn’t matter where they came from or where they lived — in the city, in the country. In a war in which one out of every three people who died was a child, every family of Ana Maria’s generation was left scarred by the violence.

“Everyone has a story,” she says. “Everyone either knew someone who was kidnapped or killed.”

Two years ago, when Holt began exploring how we might help children and families in Colombia, we acted in response to a request from the Colombian government. They needed help finding loving families for children who had lost or become permanently separated from their birth families, and hoped we would re-establish an adoption program in Colombia.

Immediately, we responded to this need — and once established with local partners, began seeking families for children. Many of them are older. Many of them are part of large sibling groups. And although many of them are too young to have directly experienced the worst of the war, many of their parents had gotten caught up in the violence and crime that so many people of that era resorted to just to survive. It became a way of life, and it hardened many of them — creating a cycle of neglect and abuse in families.

The trauma children waiting for families in Colombia have endured is, in many cases, unspeakable. But Ana Maria hasn’t given up hope for them.

Before becoming Holt’s Colombia program director, Ana Maria worked independently with several adoption agencies. An attorney by profession, she has over the past 20 years helped complete the legal process for hundreds of Colombian children to join permanent, loving families through adoption. She has seen what can happen when a child has a family.

“When a child has a family,” she says, “nothing replaces that look in their eyes. It’s like, ‘Wow, I know they’re going to be fine.’”

At Holt, this belief underscores everything we do. We believe children thrive in families, and that every child — no matter how traumatized, no matter their age or history or special needs — deserves to grow up loved and adored by parents of their own. But we also believe that whenever possible, children deserve to grow up in their birth families. Some children can’t, and for these children, we actively seek adoptive families.

But as in every country where we work, we’ve discovered that so many parents in Colombia just need a little help to care for their children. The kind of help that comes from the generosity and compassion of others. The kind of help that comes from sponsors.

A Different Way Forward

When Monica decided to open the door at Bambi, Holt’s local partner in Darien, she found on the other side a whole team of people ready to help her provide a better life for her daughter. She saw the bright, colorful daycare center where other moms and dads left their children while they worked during the day, and began getting up before dawn to drop Yalena off in the morning.

But as Monica quickly learned, free daycare was just one of the many support services that Bambi offered for struggling parents like her. “Many arrive [at Bambi] because they know they will care for their children for free,” Germán says of the parents who join the program. “They go looking for a place for their children, but when we explain everything they can do, they are like, ‘Seriously?!!’”

As the staff psychologist, Germán counsels and supports the families to help build their confidence and help them cope with the trauma they’ve endured. Some parents come to Bambi feeling hopeless, believing there’s no way in this world for them, he says. Many grew up surrounded by the violence and crime that the drug cartels brought to Darien during the war. Like Monica, many dropped out of school early and now have little opportunity to break free of poverty. They work as day laborers in the plantations without benefits like sick leave. If they bring their child to work, they will be fired, Germán says. And even if they have family in town, everyone has to work to survive.

“That leaves no one to be home with the children,” he says.

Some people long for the days when the cartels brought easy money to Darien, but Germán says that organizations like Bambi have had a huge influence on shifting attitudes in the community. “We’ve shown them that they can do it a different way,” he says. “You may not be a millionaire, but you can do it a different way.”

At Bambi, Germán coordinates the PROMEFA program — a vocational training program that empowers parents with the skills they need to earn a better income. Through PROMEFA, Germán shows parents a different way to overcome poverty than crime and drugs.

But first, they have to work on themselves.

“When they go to PROMEFA, the world opens up to them,” he explains. “Basically, our goal is to work with them — give them training so they can receive an income. But the basis is personal work. If they’re not healed, they can’t do anything.”

When Monica first came to Bambi, she had very little self-worth. She valued her daughter’s life, but not her own. “When I was young, I didn’t have support from my mom or my dad,” she says. “Nothing really mattered.”

Before moving to Darien to live with her dad at 14, Monica grew up in Agua Blanca — one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the southwestern city of Cali.

“It was horrible,” she says. “There were shootings, robberies, drugs.”

Her mom worked two jobs to provide for Monica and her two younger siblings. She would leave at 5 in the morning, and then come home briefly in the evening before heading to her second job at a fast food restaurant. Some days, Monica didn’t even see her mom. Coming of age in Agua Blanca, Monica soon fell in with the wrong crowd.

Her mom hoped sending her to Darien would get her back on track. Periodically, she even sent money for school supplies. But when Monica’s father forced her to drop out of school, any hope Monica had for her future started to fade away. Like most of the women in the Bambi program, Monica was still a teenager when she got pregnant with Yalena.

Colombia has a particularly high rate of teen pregnancy — one of the highest in Latin America, affecting one in every five girls between the ages of 15 and 19. Early marriage is a contributing factor, as is a cultural value placed on motherhood that leads young girls to find self-worth through pregnancy. Lisseth Romero, the director of the PROMEFA program in Bogotá, attributes the prevalence of teen pregnancy in part to a cultural taboo around sex education. But also, an overall absence of parental guidance.

“Parents often abandon their children all day,” she says. “They’re not available to care for them.”

In the communities where Bambi works — and where sponsors support children — many of the parents in the program also grew up in families caught up in crime and drugs. There’s 20-year-old Sandra, whose parents were drug addicts and who got into drugs in her early teens, too. She’s clean now, and has two young boys who attend Bambi’s daycare program in Bogotá while she works to graduate high school. Other parents in the program grew up in families displaced by the war only to find themselves in the city without any way to provide for their children.

Many, like Monica’s mom, struggled with poverty and tried their best, often working two jobs to make ends meet. But inevitably, as Lisseth observes, they had no time left over to be there for their children — to guide and support them, comfort and protect them.

As is the case everywhere, poverty, crime, drug use and teen pregnancy follow a cyclical pattern in families in Colombia. But with the support of sponsors and Holt’s local partners, some families are starting to break that cycle. They are learning to leave the past behind — in their lives and in their country — and create a happier, more hopeful future for their children.

When asked how she wants her daughter’s life to be different from her own, Monica says, “I want her to have everything that I was never able to have. Not a life of riches, but a good life economically.”

It’s also important to Monica that she spend more time with Yalena than she had with her mother growing up. “I think I was the way I was and I didn’t value life because with my mom, we were hardly ever together,” she says. “Then with my dad, we have a very bad relationship.”

Monica is now working to achieve her goals — to give Yalena the life she never had. Through the PROMEFA program, she learned how to sew and crochet, attended entrepreneurship classes and developed a business plan. She received a sewing machine to help her start her business, and now earns significantly more money working as a part-time tailor. She no longer works in the plantations, and found a job cleaning houses while she works to grow her client base. Ultimately, she wants to have her own business and work out of her home so that she can spend more time with her daughter.

Germán says Monica is the “best example” of the impact of the program, and of sponsorship.

“All she has is because she was able to start working and bought everything herself,” he says, surveying her front room — at the center of which sits Yalena’s princess castle. Monica shows us a picture of Yalena’s baptism dress, which she made her, as well as a tablecloth that she crocheted herself.

Monica says she has seen a dramatic change in Yalena since she started attending the daycare program at Bambi. “The difference is huge,” she says. “She learned to share with the other kids. She learned how to be around other people. And she has learned a lot through the music, dance and art classes. That’s what she likes the most.”

Monica especially loves the nurturing care that Yalena receives at daycare. “I love the way that they care for the kids, dedicate time for them,” she says. “The love that they give our kids while we are working helps all of us to move forward.”

Since starting the program, Monica has started taking high school equivalency classes in the evenings around her work schedule. She brings Yalena to class, who sits beside her pretending to take notes like her mom. Monica’s greatest wish is to walk alongside her daughter at graduation, with Yalena in a miniature matching cap and gown.

“My life has changed 100 percent,” she says. “For me to give me daughter a better future has been the greatest … I have learned to value life and to enjoy it. To keep moving forward for me and for me daughter. Especially, for my daughter.”

But without the support of sponsors and donors, and Holt’s local staff and partners, Monica knows that the door would have been closed — not just to her, but all the moms and children whose lives have changed because of the program.

“With all my heart and speaking for all of the moms who have received help, I would like to give a very heartfelt thanks, and may God bless you today and forever,” she says to sponsors, speaking through the camera. “Because there aren’t people like you in other places. You help us open doors that allow us to support our families. With all my heart, I give you thanks.”

With all my heart, I give you thanks.”

Monica

As we leave, Monica stands in the doorway of her home, holding Yalena in her arms. The sun has begun to set over Darien, lighting up the sky in a dusty pink and gold. Monica’s neighbors sit on their porches or arrive home on motorbike while their children ride up the hill on their bicycles — carefree and safe even as the day wanes. As she surveys the scene, Monica’s eyes have a look of peace in them. And as Yalena nestles into her mom’s arms, safe and loved, she gets that look in her eyes that children get when they have a family. And we know they’re going to be fine.

This story was originally published on July 12, 2019

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The post A Whole New World appeared first on Holt International.

The sun is low in the sky as we drive the narrow road that curves through the small fishing village where 4-year-old Sunan and his great-grandma, Kamala, live in southern Thailand. On either side of the road stand waist-high fields of rice the almost-neon green color of spring shoots. The roadside is dotted with houses made of wood or stone — many on stilts, some with longtail boats propped out front. It’s August — the rainy season in Thailand — and the sky looks like it’s about to burst into a summer storm.

When we arrive at Kamala and Sunan’s home, it’s clear they have been waiting for us — with half-coconuts full of Kamala’s home-made coconut jelly set on a table out front. Kamala cares for three of her great-grandchildren — Sunan, his 14-year-old cousin and his baby cousin, whose first birthday they are celebrating today.

Sunan has lived with his great-grandma since his father went to prison for drug trafficking, an issue that plagues this coastal community. His mom couldn’t provide for him so she left him with Kamala, knowing he would be in good care. When Holt’s partner staff in Thailand learned about Sunan, he was still just a baby — and Kamala needed help affording the high cost of infant formula. Holt donors made it possible for our partner staff to provide free boxes of formula to Kamala, ensuring she could meet Sunan’s nutritional needs. Seeing they needed additional help, Holt’s local partner then enrolled Sunan in Holt’s child sponsorship program — matching him with a sponsor in the U.S. who would provide monthly support, and help him thrive in his great-grandma’s care.

At 65, Kamala seems tired, with a furrow in her brow. Covid is still a risk in Thailand, and she wears a mask that covers most of her face. But she is warm and generous with us — urging us to try her home-made jelly and encouraging us to hold her great-granddaughter. Caring for children at her age is taxing, and she is grateful for the Holt sponsors who help provide school supplies, clothing, food and other basic needs.

The impact of sponsorship is also evident as we interact with Sunan and his cousins. He smiles and laughs as he plays with a toy car and snacks on coconut jelly, his eyes bright and joyful and his smile warm and engaging. He is clearly very healthy and very well loved.

But the monthly support of a sponsor is not the only way that Holt’s partner staff in southern Thailand has helped Kamala provide for Sunan and her other grandchildren. As in many of the countries where Holt works, sponsors and donors also support programs that help families grow their income — and ultimately help them become stable, self-reliant and equipped to independently care for their children.

How Sponsors Help Children in Southern Thailand

In Thailand, Holt’s local partner, Holt Sahathai Foundation, has developed robust services to strengthen and empower families who are struggling to care for their children. In this region of southern Thailand, the need for these services has become greater than ever over the past 10-15 years as commercial fishing has devastated the local economy. Today, this community struggles with poverty, drug use, and high rates of teen pregnancy and children dropping out of school early. Over the past few years, the Covid-19 pandemic and global inflation have only made the situation worse — with higher rates of unemployment and an increased cost of living.

As HSF’s social services director, Goranid “Tuk” Sudmee, explains it, “People need to work longer hours to afford food and families’ needs, so they use drugs — [mostly methamphetamines] — to work longer hours.”

Ten years ago, a tablet of meth cost about 250 Baht, Tuk says. But with an influx of the drug imported from neighboring countries, a single tablet now costs about 50-60 Baht, or about $1.5 a pill. With meth so cheap and easy to get, the drug has become especially pervasive among local fisherman who use it to work longer shifts and hopefully catch more fish from the depleted local waters.

With so many adults using drugs, the children living in this community are vulnerable to falling into the same pattern of using drugs, dropping out of school early, and becoming teen parents. Heartbreakingly, many babies born to these teen parents are also born addicted to drugs. And it’s not just teenagers.

“Teen moms and women over 30 get pregnant and use drugs,” Tuk says, adding that this is happening all over Thailand. “Half of children in HSF foster care are born to mothers on drugs.”

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Keeping children in school is one way that HSF works to break this cycle. Currently, HSF has about 150 children in sponsorship in this region of southern Thailand. When children are enrolled in sponsorship, they are far more likely to finish school – and in recent years, a handful have even gone on to university.

When children aren’t in sponsorship, many drop out before they reach high school.

“Most kids drop out in eighth or ninth grade,” Tuk says. “HSF works hard to prevent them from dropping out.”

Since so few parents in this community have graduated school themselves, few children have examples within their family of how education can change their lives. But HSF social workers counsel both children and their families on the importance of education, and often connect older students with adults who can act as role models for them. If a student is struggling in school, their social worker will provide one-on-one coaching and support.

They try to build a relationship of trust where they really listen to the children, Tuk says of HSF social workers, and motivate them by emphasizing the opportunities an education can open up for them.

Matching children with child sponsors is another effective strategy for keeping them on a good path. Sponsors help cover the cost of uniforms, school supplies, transportation to and from school, and a small allowance to meet unidentified needs. For children in sponsorship, HSF allies with community leaders, teachers and the children’s families to help guide and protect them. But with so many parents experiencing addiction, and many in and out of prison, HSF has to look to other trusted adults in their lives — in many cases, grandparents or other relatives.   

“Kids in sponsorship are at high risk of getting into drugs,” Tuk says. “That’s why we work with the grandparents to help protect them.”

Through group workshops and one-on-one counseling, HSF social workers empower caregivers to become a powerful, positive and consistent presence in the children’s lives. As Tuk says, they encourage these grandparents and other relatives to be “consistent, warm and emotionally responsive” to the children in their care.

“[HSF also] provides fun, happy activities such as camps and clubs to develop the children’s life skills,” Tuk says. With the support of sponsors and donors, HSF will host events such as New Year’s parties where families can cook together — or coordinate fun field trips to the zoo and other places. Whenever possible, they engage the children’s caregivers in these activities, which helps strengthen their bond.

Job Skills Training Empowers Families to Provide for Children

When HSF staff met Kamala three years ago, they saw how much she loved and cared for her grandchildren. But they also saw that she struggled to provide for them on the low daily wage she earned as a cook. Together, they began exploring ways to help her grow her income so that she could better provide for her grandchildren and also be home with them more — empowering her to provide more attentive care, and keep a more watchful eye.

Our partner soon learned that Kamala had a unique, and marketable, skill.

“She had the skill to pickle fish,” Tuk says. “HSF trained her how to do the business.”

HSF social workers taught Kamala how to package the fish in shrink wrap, add an expiration date, and even helped her create a logo and sell her product online. After building her pickled fish business, Kamala expanded her product offering — and now sells her home-made coconut jelly as well. She earns about 5,000 Baht/month from her business, which is significantly more than she earned as a cook — and she has the added bonus of being home with Sunan and her other great-grandchildren while she works during the day.

Kamala is now a role model for other families who are struggling to provide for their children in her community. She is one of a little over 100 role model families that HSF and Holt sponsors have helped empower through job skills training, education, counseling, support groups, and other tools and resources.

Currently, HSF works with about 500 families. “Twenty of these families are so poor that they want to place their kids in the children’s home,” Tuk says. “We have to work with them very closely.”

While the government provides about 6,000 Baht, or $175, per year to help families living in poverty, HSF is the only organization in the community providing the kind of holistic support that families need to grow stable and self-reliant — and prevent them from placing their children in orphanages.     

“It’s not just food support. It’s much more difficult,” Tuk says of HSF’s family strengthening model. “[Families] have to change their thinking to change their lives. That’s why it takes many years.”

Ten years ago, Tuk says, most families could exit HSF’s family strengthening program — and most children could graduate from the sponsorship program — after about two to four years. With all of the support that children and families received, they would be able to reach a place of stability and self-reliance within that time. But now, because of the depressed economy, increased drug use and other social changes in this community, HSF social workers have to work with families for a much longer period of time before they can exit the program and independently provide for their children.

“Now it takes seven years or longer,” Tuk says, adding that HSF recently introduced a group activity to help kids and families develop self-esteem, focus on the future and avoid falling back into a harmful lifestyle.

But although it takes longer for families to overcome many of the challenges they face, one of the most effective ways HSF empowers families is through job skills training. While Kamala had a unique skill that she was able to build into a business, many families come to HSF hoping to learn skilled trades that will grow their family’s income — or provide a reliable alternative to fishing, working in construction or laboring in factories, many of which have relocated to neighboring countries in Southeast Asia where they can pay workers lower wages.

On a Friday afternoon in August, the HSF office is bustling with families who have journeyed here to attend HSF’s job fair and support group sessions. Inside, a group of women and children sit in a circle and share about their experiences as part of an HSF support group for single mothers. Outside, men and women visit different stations to learn about job training opportunities. The demonstrations are led by different HSF role models — parents who have learned a skill with the support of HSF and turned their skill into a thriving business. One role model demonstrates how she cuts and styles hair for a living. Another skillfully pours batter onto a hot burner and demonstrates how she makes savory crepes that she sells for 25 Baht a piece. Another has a row of syrups lined up, and mixes a variety of iced drinks for the attendees to try.

“They see they can make a living and can get a loan from HSF to start a small business,” Tuk says of the families attending the fair — many of them single mothers who have little to no income. To get financial support or a microloan funded by Holt sponsors and donors, they have to write a project proposal. Once their proposal is approved, they can get a zero-interest loan to purchase supplies they need to start their business or other items they need to improve their livelihoods.

Many families and single mothers who started a business with an HSF microloan are so grateful that they volunteer to teach others what they learned — including many of the role models leading demonstrations at the HSF job fair. 

The woman who works as a hairstylist has four children. She is HIV-positive and first came to HSF for help in 2013. Today, two of her children are in college. She is so grateful for the help HSF gave her that she even invites families to her home to learn how to do what she does. Because of HSF’s job skills training, she was able to earn enough to support her four children, help them escape the cycle of poverty and drug abuse, and go on to lead successful, independent lives.

But none of HSF’s programs would be possible without the kind and generous support of Holt sponsors and donors.

As Tuk says, “Your kind support makes changes in these children and families’ lives — and helps them to help themselves.”

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The post In Thailand, Sponsors and Donors Keep Kids at Risk on a Good Path appeared first on Holt International.

Kamala is raising her three grandchildren in a coastal fishing village in southern Thailand. Almost everyone here struggles with poverty, including Kamala.

When we met Kamala, she was working as a cook and barely made enough to feed and care for her grandchildren. But she is smart and talented and had so much potential to be able to independently provide for them! She just needed some help to get started…

When Holt donors gave her the Gift of Hope of vocational training, it was exactly the help she needed!

Kamala was already skilled at pickling fish. Then with vocational training, she had the knowledge and tools she needed to package the fish, print video to market and sell her product online!

Today, Kamala’s business is thriving. And she’s even expanded it — now selling delicious coconut jelly in addition to pickled fish. (Which her grandchildren love, too!)

With the gift of vocational training, Kamala is now empowered to provide for her grandchildren — she earns enough to give them enough food, clothing, school supplies and more! Kamala is a role model to her whole community, and she is overcoming the cycle of poverty for herself and her grandchildren!

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The post How Pickling Fish Overcomes Poverty appeared first on Holt International.

When Yuleidy first came to Bogotá, Colombia, she and her two children settled into a neighborhood characterized by impossibly steep streets and multi-story apartment buildings nestled straight up into the hillsides. It’s also one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city – but it was all Yuleidy could afford.

In a whole new city, all on her own, she felt lost. She had lived in Venezuela her whole life, but after years of political instability and deep poverty in her country, she gathered her two children and immigrated across the border to Colombia. But her new life didn’t come easy.

“We had to start a new life and adapt to everything,” Yuleidy says. “I had to sell empanadas, arepas and other foods on the street.” But despite how hard she was working, she was barely getting by. She had no way of making more money, and no one to help her with the children.

That’s when a neighbor told her about Bambi, Holt’s partner organization right there in her neighborhood.

For over twenty-two years, Bambi has served children and families in this impoverished area of Bogotá. And the help they offer meets families right where they’re at.

For children who have lost their parents, Bambi is a nurturing care facility where children live as they wait to be reunified with birth family or join a loving, permanent family through adoption. But Bambi also works to keep children together with their birth parents — offering interventions and support to lift families from poverty and prevent children from being separated from their families in the first place.

“This is a really vulnerable population — it’s a lot of people who have had to migrate here, and they came without anything. When you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders and nowhere to turn, it’s not just stress — it can be debilitating.”

Malia Robello, Holt’s Colombia program manager

This was exactly the help that Yuleidy and her children needed.

While Yuleidy’s older daughter spent her days safely at school, 2-year-old Arturo had nowhere to go – making it impossible for Yuleidy to pursue a different, higher-paying job than selling food on the side of the road. Yuleidy, like so many parents like her, felt stuck. Without a support system or resources, she felt helpless to create a better life for her children.

“This is a really vulnerable population — it’s a lot of people who have had to migrate here, and they came without anything,” says Malia Robello, Holt’s Colombia program manager who recently visited Bambi. “When you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders and nowhere to turn, it’s not just stress — it can be debilitating.”

That’s why Bambi works in this neighborhood, among these parents and children. With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, they help families by providing a safe place for children to be looked after and nurtured while their parents receive the tools and training they need to thrive, too.

The Comunidad is a free daycare open to children every day of the week, any time day or night — in order to accommodate parent’s daytime or nightime work shifts. The daycare itself has brightly colored walls, with the children’s art projects taped up around the room. A cook provides children with nutritious meals at tiny tables and chairs, and a napping room is available for afternoon naps as well as nighttime sleep. Bright toys line the floor and walls of the playroom, and outside a playground invites children with a slide, swings, a tunnel and monkey bars.   

“The facility itself is really calming and relaxing and comforting,” says Malia. It’s a safe and fun place for the children — but also for their parents.

With Arturo safely in the Comunidad program, Yuleidy was free to receive the support she needed, too. Like most parents at the center, Yuleidy hadn’t completed her high school education. Like many Venezuelan immigrants, Yuleidy’s education was interrupted due to instability during their teenage years. For other immigrant parents, the interruption was due to poverty, an early pregnancy, or other difficulty. So one of the first things Yuleidy did at Bambi was enroll in a high school equivalency course, to work towards earning her diploma.

“It has given me a total change since I have learned a trade, which has allowed me to guarantee food and sustenance for my children.”

Yuleidy

“They’re really proud, most proud, of getting their diplomas and finishing school,” says Malia of the parents in the program. For many parents, it’s the chance to achieve a dream they never thought possible.

But beyond completing their education, parents also have the opportunity for vocational training — to master a trade that will earn the income they need to stand on their own two feet.

The vocational training programs Bambi currently offers are sewing, cosmetology and baking. After having the chance to explore all three, Yuleidy decided to focus on baking.

Every day, Yuleidy drops Arturo off at the daycare, and walks to the other end of the building. In a kitchen complete with all the tools and ovens needed, she learns baking from an expert pastry chef. She’s now been in the program over 18 months, and in that time has become skilled and confident in her new trade.

“It has given me a total change since I have learned a trade,” Yuleidy says, “which has allowed me to guarantee food and sustenance for my children.”

In addition to the actual vocational skills, parents also complete a “life project” during their time at Bambi. This project encourages them to dream and build a sustainable business plan, complete with identifying obstacles, and thinking ahead to acquire the resources they’ll need to be successful.

“They feel they have a safety net and some resources now,” Malia says, “and a lot of pride and feeling a lot more confident in themselves.”   

In addition to being empowered with the skills and knowledge to start a business, parents also receive important parenting support and training.

A staff psychologist is available to parents every day, to help them heal from trauma and learn healthy ways of parenting their children.

“Bambi helped me personally with psychology, how to treat my children, to take care of myself to change my way of thinking and acting,” Yuleidy says. And now, she has a healthier and closer relationship with each of her children.

Yuleidy dreams of becoming a successful pastry chef in Bogotá, and most of all, she dreams of being able to continue her business to guarantee a good life for her children. But now, it’s not just a dream, but a reality that she’s been empowered to accomplish.

“My life is wonderful,” Yuleidy says, “because I have my two children who I fight for every day.”

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Mukul, 47, is a single father living in New Delhi, India. He has been the sole provider for his daughter since his wife passed. His daughter was just 8 years old at the time. Mukul wants nothing more than to provide her with a stable home and future, but he’s had a hard time finding steady work. Facing an unemployment rate of about 9% in India’s cities, Mukul has found himself juggling low-paying jobs on and off.

Then in May 2022, Mukul and his daughter’s lives changed for the better when Mukul enrolled in a professional job skills training and placement program through a local Holt partner. The training is part of a larger effort to help strengthen families at risk of separation in some of Delhi’s most impoverished slum communities, and is supported by Holt sponsors and donors. Called the “KARE” program — short for “Kinship Care and Relational Engagement” — this family strengthening effort focuses on keeping children ages 5-15 out of institutional settings and in the care of their families. Many of them are led by single parents like Mukul. Other children live with extended family members in what is known as “kinship care.”  

In 2022, Holt’s partner in Delhi came to an important realization about how to achieve the mission of the KARE program. It was clear that if caregivers are economically disempowered, they have no option for survival and end up being dependent on others for their livelihood.

With that in mind, our partner assessed the job market in New Delhi and decided to launch an intensive job skills training program to help parents and other caregivers earn a more stable income. We decided to focus on one high-demand skill — professional housekeeping. In the city of New Delhi, thousands of families are in search of good and well-trained housekeepers, but there has been no structured investment to train housekeepers professionally. It remains the most disorganized industry so far.

In May, our partner launched a housekeeping training program that will take place over 40 working days and conclude in early July. It enrolled 30 women as well as two brave men, including Mukul. In a country where social tradition continues to assign specific roles and responsibilities based on gender, Mukul’s decision to learn housekeeping underscores his commitment and love for his daughter. He will do anything to give her a better life.

The inclusion of men in the program is a classic example of gender nonconformity, as men are not supposed to participate in household work in Indian society.

To provide hands-on experience to its participants, the program is conducted at a dedicated training center, with six workstations set up for food preparation and cooking, a “dummy” apartment set up to teach household management skills, and a classroom where participants learn English and other non-technical skills. The instructors include a chef from the hotel industry, a housekeeping trainer with more than 15 years of experience and a certified English teacher. With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, childcare and a meal are provided for younger children while their parents study.

In addition to the housekeeping training, our partner is teaching four grandmothers in the KARE program how to be daycare providers. The women are learning how to manage a daycare center, care for children and provide meals, activities and other essentials. With the income they earn, they can better care for their grandchildren, whom they are raising on their own.

Once the training period is over, the program intends to:

• Find housekeeping jobs for each caregiver. Ideally, the graduates will earn an average of about $250 (U.S.) per month.

• Help each participant set up a bank account where they can deposit their salary and put at least $20 a month into a government savings bond.

• Provide safe daycare options for its participants. While parents work, they will be able to bring their children to the home of one of the grandmothers enrolled in the daycare training program. Young children will spend a full day at daycare, while older kids will come after school. With the support of Holt sponsors and donors, children will receive two meals a day, some recreational activities and a safe place to study and rest. Each caregiver will contribute $20 a month to the cost of their child’s care, thus providing the grandmother with an income.

• Ensure that the men and women in the program are treated fairly — that they are not abused by their employers, have legal rights and a safe workplace environment.

For Mukul, the program holds the promise of a better life. Through professional training as a housekeeper, he hopes not only to find steady employment — but also to achieve the level of security he so desires for himself and his daughter. After the heartbreak of his past, the road ahead finally looks bright!

Learn more about Holt’s work in India!

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The post Job Skills Training Empowers 36 Caregivers Through Holt Partner in India appeared first on Holt International.

Cali is a lush and vibrant city home to over 2 million people in southwest Colombia. But like many developing countries, Colombia — and Cali — has two sides. In one neighborhood where sponsors support children, wealthy landowners live side by side with an unlicensed, makeshift community that sprung up during the war to accommodate rural, indigenous families displaced by the violence.

To protect their children, many families fled their farms in the neighboring state of Cauca, and settled here behind a wall topped with broken glass that divides them from their wealthy neighbors.

Today, some of these families still live without running water, a sewer system or any public services. Many of them had no way to earn a living when they first arrived, and struggled to provide food and education for their children. Some are young parents who dropped out of school early to care for their babies. But as these young couples arrived, our local partner began an outreach campaign — offering services like free, sponsor-supported daycare where their children would receive a critical early education and a safe place to go while their parents worked during the day.

With the support of sponsors, our partner sought to empower young mothers with personal development and job skills training, helped them finish high school, and provided positive parenting trainings to teach them about nutrition, hygiene and to help them move away from the violent dynamics that many of them grew up with and that their families internalized during the war. Behind the wall of broken glass, these families have grown gardens, built homes and created a thriving community. Most of all, their children are thriving, because of sponsors and donors like you.

Empowering Women and Children in Colombia

“To see my daughter, how she started and how she is doing now, she has learned so many things. They are helping me also as a mom […] I grew up with my parents but it was a very difficult living. They had problems, they used to fight a lot. I would like to give my children my best example so they won’t have to go through the same thing that I did. I would love to give them everything. That’s why I want to study, prepare myself. So they will have a better quality of life.”

— Diana, whose 3-year-old daughter attends the sponsor-supported daycare program. Diana is now working to earn her high school diploma. She migrated to Cali from Cauca.

“This [program]  helps people like me so much that don’t have the means to give our children a good education and to feed them well. Thank you with all my heart. May God help you to keep sharing yourselves in this beautiful work and I hope you continue to help people like us, kids that need it very much, and thank you so much for offering us this wonderful support.”

          — Kelly, whose 3-year-old son attends the sponsor-supported daycare program. If not for the help she received, Kelly says that she and her children would have had to move back to Cauca. She hopes to attend nurse’s assistant training with sponsor support.

“I have learned many, many things. I went to the personal development workshops […] Before, I didn’t really trust myself. I felt that I was not capable of anything. But through the program, I gained confidence. And my daughter has changed a lot. Everything they teach her, she learns. Everything.”

        — Lina, whose 5-year-old daughter attends the sponsor-supported daycare program. Lina came to Cali from a port city called Buena Ventura, which like Cauca was one of the most dangerous places in Colombia during the war. With support from sponsors, she is now attending classes to become an administrative assistant.

“They have evolved a lot. Little things like looking you in the eyes. When they come the first time, they are very shy and don’t look you in the eyes and are unable to talk to you about the problems. But then they’re able to talk about them and recognize that there’s a problem […] They’re worrying about their children and want the best for them. They know the importance of their children having an education, that they receive love, and that they are affectionate with them. It’s not just giving them food. It’s more than that.”

        — Ana González, staff psychologist at Holt’s local partner who helps the families in the sponsor-supported program work toward stability and self-reliance, and successfully parent their children.

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We visit Diana at her home on a warm weekday morning, and her neighborhood is quiet but for an occasional horseback rider clop-clopping along the long, straight dirt road out in front of her home. A small black dog lays in her doorway and a cat sleeps in her garden, which is lush but well-tended, with neat stone steps that descend from the road above down a story to her orange brick home. Diana and her husband built their home themselves, she says, “brick by brick.”

Growing up, Diana’s life was much less peaceful. Her family lived in Cauca, a rural part of Colombia taken over by guerrilla groups during the war. Caught in the crossfire and desperate to protect their children, many families fled to Cali, a major city in a neighboring state, or “department,” of southwest Colombia. Others left out of poverty to try to find work in the city.

Diana moved to Cali when she was 16. Her family left not because of the violence, which didn’t affect them directly, but because there were no jobs in Cauca. They found work on a farm outside of Cali. A year later, at 17, Diana was married and pregnant with her first child.

Diana longs to give her children a more peaceful childhood than she knew growing up.

“My parents, I grew up with the them but it was a very difficult living,” says Diana, now in her early 20s. “They had problems, they used to fight a lot. I grew up in a family with conflict. I would like to give my children my best example so they won’t have to go through the same that I did.”

Today, Diana, her husband and her two children live in an unlicensed, makeshift community that sprung up during the war to accommodate families displaced by the violence in Cauca and other neighboring regions. As an “invasion sector,” their neighborhood doesn’t receive any public services and some families still live without running water or electricity. They live side by side with wealthy landowners, divided by a dirt road and a wall topped with glass.

When they first arrived, many of the families in this community had no way to earn a living, and struggled to provide food and education for their children. But as they settled in the area, Holt’s local partner began an outreach campaign — offering services like free, sponsor-supported daycare where their children could receive a critical early education and a safe place to go while their parents worked during the day.

With the support of sponsors and donors, our partner also worked with young mothers like Diana — empowering them with tools and resources to better support their children, and to achieve their own goals in life. They provided personal development and job skills training, helped them finish high school, and provided positive parenting trainings to teach them about nutrition, hygiene and to help them move away from the violent dynamics that some of them grew up with and that their families internalized during the war. Behind the wall of broken glass, these women and their families have grown gardens, built homes and, most importantly, created a thriving, safe community for their children.

Ana Gonzalez began working with these families in 2018, when she joined our partner’s Cali branch as a staff psychologist. Although relatively new to the organization, in her short time Ana has witnessed how poverty, violence and displacement have played out in the lives of the families living in this community.

“Here in Colombia, we have a lot of people who have to relocate because of the conflict. Sometimes, they’re starting from zero to build a place to find jobs when they don’t have the preparation,” Ana says over the muted sound of children playing as she stands on the lawn outside the daycare center. “They live day to day. They don’t buy groceries for the month, but the day.”

When Diana first enrolled in the program — almost exactly a year before we meet her — she was pregnant with her second child, her son. She needed a lot of help, she says. She couldn’t even go to the doctor because she had no one to watch her then 1-year-old daughter during the day while her husband was at work. She didn’t see a doctor until she was 7 months pregnant.

“I didn’t have anyone,” she says.

But when our partner accepted her daughter into the daycare program and she started the personal development workshops, Diana not only found respite from full-time caregiving — she also found people to confide in, and to offer guidance and support.

“Sometimes, conflict that you have with your partner, your husband, there’s no one to tell,” she says. “The lady that was working with us in personal development, she would teach us things and she would share with us. That has been a very big help because I had many, many issues with my husband and we were to the point that we were going to divorce. Thanks to the advice she gave us, we’re much better now.”

Through the parenting workshops, Diana also learned how to build a stronger relationship with her children. Like Diana, many of the parents in this community had difficult childhoods and unstable relationships with their own parents.

“They come from stories in their own families that are physical punishment, abandonment — and sometimes it’s hard to break from that and start a new way of doing things,” Ana explains.

In the positive parenting workshops, however, parents learn ways to discipline children without physical violence. “Here, we don’t tolerate physical punishment. We know that’s not right for children,” Ana says. “We teach them how to relate and how to strengthen that bond and relationship with their kids.”

Through the workshops, Diana learned the importance of play, and of creating a consistent, secure, loving bond with her children — of always being there for them.

“For example, they taught us that when children come home, they want to play and if the first reaction you have is ‘No, I’m busy, go away’ … what they will receive is ‘No.’ So don’t say no to your children like that,” she explains. “If they want to play, play with something that doesn’t require a lot of time. Give them time, don’t make them feel rejected.”

What Diana’s nearly 3-year-old daughter, Carolina, loves most is on Sunday afternoons when she gets to take out all her toys and play with her mom on the floor.

“My daughter, she loves when I take out every single toy that I have and we sit down and we just play,” Diana says. “She adores that. And she likes to draw. She likes when I draw an animal and she colors the animal.”

Carolina also loves it when her mom sings lullabies.

“And my little boy, my baby boy,” Diana says, “he applauds.”

In the year since Carolina started attending the daycare program at Bambi, Diana has seen a dramatic change in her daughter. Carolina has dark eyes and hair like her mom, and a bit of a skeptical expression that turns into full blown joy when her mom picks her up.

“She was very shy when she went for the first time,” Diana says of Carolina. “She didn’t speak. At home, she hid herself when people came into the house.”

Ana says that sometimes, shyness can be a sign of trouble at home.

“They repeat what they see. They repeat the model. For example, if the environment is very aggressive or tense, they tend to be very shy and don’t want to interact with others. Or on the other hand they are aggressive with others,” she says.

After a year of attending sponsor-supported daycare, however, Carolina has become much more confident. Diana was surprised at everything she learned how to do.

“She can count up to ten. She draws. She knows lots of songs. She sings a lot. I’m surprised by everything she does!” Diana says. “She knows how to tie a bow. She found a piece of tissue and she did a very nice bow. I was surprised!”

Diana says she and her husband never could have afforded to send their daughter to preschool without the help of sponsors and donors.

“I would have never been able to pay for such a place where they would teach her so many things. I wouldn’t have been able to send her anywhere,” she says.

Diana’s husband earns very little working in construction, and Diana never finished high school. When she got pregnant the first time, at 17, she hoped to continue studying. But with limited resources and no outside help or support, all her time and energy went toward caring for her newborn daughter. And within a couple years, she was pregnant again.

“With the children, they just stop. Your dreams, they just stop,” she says. “You cannot move forward with your dreams.”

Through our partner, however, Diana learned that she could work to finish high school while still at home.

“Via Whatsapp, the teachers are in contact with you, they give you materials,” Diana says of the social networking platform used in many countries outside the U.S. “It’s like an online training. At the end, they do an evaluation to see if you can pass your degree.”

Although continuing her education is a personal dream, since having children, it has also become about them — about giving them the best future possible.

“I would love to give them everything, that’s why I want to study, prepare myself,” she says. “So they will have a better quality of life.”

By becoming educated herself, she gives her kids her “best example.”

“I would give them the world. I want them to study, to have a career,” says Diana. “Not to follow my steps that I couldn’t finish high school … If you don’t finish your studies, it’s hard. I want them to study, to be somebody in life.”

Through the sponsor and donor-supported programs of our local partner, both Diana and her daughter are receiving the education and empowerment they need — not only to escape the pattern of poverty and conflict that Diana grew up with in her family, but also to assert themselves as strong, independent, capable women.

Among the families our local partner works with, the burden of caregiving and household responsibilities often falls solely on women, which is a major source of conflict between parents.

“Here in Colombia, [roles] are still very traditional so we want them to break that,” explains Ana, who encourages the parents to communicate their feelings and to share responsibilities inside the home. “Because they are a woman, they don’t have to just stay in the house … We can help them study and work and find contexts that aren’t their own houses.”

While some women are still working to graduate high school, others are pursuing professions through training programs supported by sponsors and donors. “They can study beauty, cooking, nursing, different stuff depending on their interests,” Ana says of the moms in the program, some of whom are single parents struggling to support their families on their own. “Also … if they have some idea of a business, we also support that idea. For example, we have people that sew. One mother has an ice cream shop.”

Once Diana’s son is old enough to walk, he can also start attending the daycare program, which will free up more time for her to study. When we meet her, she is gathering the final documents she needs to start the remote high school equivalency program. And once she graduates, she hopes to study systems IT.

Diana bounces her son in blue and white striped pajamas, awake from a nap and sitting in his mom’s arms with sleepy eyes as we ask her how she feels about the support she has received through our partner program. “I had never seen anywhere else with this type of help. Amazingly good,” she says. “To see my daughter, how she started and how she is doing now, she has learned so many things. They are helping me also as a mom.”

About the change in her daughter, she says, “I feel joy. She’s very intelligent. The first time she sees something, she records that in her memory. It stays there. I’m so very excited. And very thankful to the foundation that they accepted me and that I was able to give my daughter that chance.”

But as Ana says, it’s not just the children who change through the program. It’s also the parents.

“They have evolved a lot,” she says. “Just physically, they care about themselves. The way they dress, the way they come here. Little things like looking you in the eyes. When they come the first time, they are very shy and don’t look you in the eyes and are unable to talk to you about the problems. But then they’re able to talk … I can see that they’re having a big change.”

Most of all, they are able to express their worries and fears, their hopes and dreams, and commit to creating change in their lives and their homes for the sake of their kids. With the support of sponsors and donors, and a whole team of professionals helping them through Holt’s local partner in Cali, they are working for something more — something better.

“They’re worrying about their children and want the best for them. They know the importance of their children having an education, that they receive love, and that they are affectionate with them,” Ana says, standing behind the wall that divides the rich from the poor, the haves and have nots in this makeshift community — this “invasion sector” — in southwest Colombia. “It’s not just giving them food. It’s more than that.”

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The post Her Best Example: Empowering Women and Children in Colombia appeared first on Holt International.

For many women, impending motherhood is a momentous event, often filled with laughter, joy, baby showers, nursery decorating, and bright hopes for the future.

But for women going through tough times who don’t have family or friends to support them, being a mother can be incredibly overwhelming — just to get through each day. They don’t think they can take care of themselves, much less their children. And sometimes, to give both their child and themselves the best chance to survive and thrive, they make the decision to place one or more of their children for adoption — even if they don’t really want to.

Over her 30 years’ of experience in social services, eight of them with Holt International, Nancy Crouch has seen more than her share of heartbroken mothers, sitting in her office in tears, facing this same dilemma. And as the director for domestic adoption and birth parents services at Holt International’s Illinois and Wisconsin branch, Nancy is in the position to help empower these women and change their lives.

Holt-Sunny Ridge aims to change women’s lives through empowerment

“Providing hope to others has really become my life’s work,” Nancy says, “starting with empowering women — helping them learn the tools to become self-sufficient and to keep their family together. Giving them hope that things will improve in their lives, that they will have more self-esteem and feel capable of taking care of themselves and their children.”

Through her work, Nancy helps mothers who want to place their children for adoption to find peace in their decision. She also helps them cope with the grief and loss associated with adoption. But mostly, she tries to help women see that adoption isn’t the only option they have — that they can learn to take care of themselves and their children on their own.

This idea is the seed behind Holt-Sunny Ridge’s “Empowering Women, Strengthening Families” (EWSF) Program. According to Nancy, mothers who came to us who were considering adoption for their children are in crisis mode. They’re often out of work, homeless and alone. They don’t have family or friends or any form of support in place to help them.

Through the generous foundation grant, Nancy and her team were able to start EWSF. The fund is used to help struggling mothers and their children by providing everything from housing, food and transportation to childcare and clothing until they can get on their feet.

More importantly, the EWSF fund helps women become self-sufficient and able to independently parent their children through a range of programs. These programs include therapy and counseling, as well as workshops covering a wide array of topics, from career development to personal finance, from nutrition and healthy lifestyles to developing healthy relationships. The program takes a holistic approach to empowering women and paving a way for them to find success in their lives.

The EWSF program has provided services to mothers in crisis for over two years, with plans to grow as new partnerships form — providing additional funding and support through volunteerism. Nancy said there are many ways that corporations and organizations can get involved. One way involves teaching EWSF participants the nitty-gritty details of personal finance.

“Mainly, we teach our moms basic budgeting and opening a checking and savings account,” shares Nancy. “But some of our moms are ready for a higher level. They really want to analyze and build their credit, so they need more one-on-one support. They may want to learn about different types of savings programs and other ways to gain financial progress. We’re hoping to have volunteers with expertise in this area to be able to help them one on one with learning about different ways to manage finances.”

Empowering women does change lives

Nancy emphasizes that the EWSF program is structured to teach participants the life skills they need to have long-term success, not just offer short-term solutions. And through the program, Nancy has seen many women’s lives change for the better.

Nina, a single mom to three children, joined the EWSF program in March, 2018. Nina had a traumatic past, losing her mom at birth and growing up in a dangerous downtown Chicago neighborhood. Despite her difficulties growing up and having to raise two kids on her own, Nina managed to graduate high school and start her own party-planning business.

Things came to a breaking point shortly after she gave birth to her third child. Her cousin was shot and killed right on her front porch, forcing Nina to move her family to a quieter suburban neighborhood. However, the move put a stop to her business and took her away from her family. The pressures of having to provide for her children and herself without any income or family support made Nina desperate. It came to the point where she considered placing all three of her kids for adoption.

That’s when she learned about Holt-Sunny Ridge and the EWSF program. Through EWSF and the consistent help of a Holt-Sunny Ridge social worker, Nina saw that her situation wasn’t hopeless. With counseling and guidance, she slowly got back on her feet. The program helped cover childcare and provided tools she needed. By the time she graduated from the program in September, 2018, Nina had more self-esteem as a woman and as a parent, and she returned to her business with more skills to help her succeed.

As of this writing, Nina has a growing events-planning business, with her own office space and employees. She’s renting an apartment, has her own car, and is taking college courses. More importantly, she’s emotionally stable and feels more capable of successfully parenting and providing for her kids. Additionally, Nina gives back to Holt-Sunny Ridge by volunteering as a mentor for other moms in the EWSF program.

“What we’re trying to do is to remove all the barriers so that women can succeed,” says Nancy. “We’re looking to give women long-term solutions and tools to continue with their success.”

Linda Wilson | Director of Corporate Social Responsibility

For more information about how you can partner with Holt to support the EWSF program, Holt International’s Illinois and Wisconsin branch.

The post Empowering Women: The Key to Strengthening Families appeared first on Holt International.

Do you have a video or a story that you think would be good for us to share? Send it to creative@holtinternational.org!

Daniel Hespen | Former Holt team member

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