During my trip to India in October 2022, I visited a daycare program in Bangalore that’s supported by Holt sponsors and donors like you. The facility was just remodeled with Holt’s funding support, and it gave me a warm feeling as I walked through — knowing the children could enjoy a much more equipped space. During my visit, a girl caught my attention. She stood up and led her classmates in reading the alphabet. Her name was Sita, and she seemed quite a leader and very smart. She is 5 years old and with the support of a sponsor, she has been attending the daycare program for a year now. She is learning the alphabet, math, crafts and character development, and because of her sponsor, she receives nutritious food every day she attends daycare.

Originally from Tamil Nadu, Sita migrated to Bangalore with her parents, grandparents and brother. Her father works in security and when they first came to the city, he was the only breadwinner of the family, which made it hard to make ends meet. Thankfully, Sita’s mother later found a job in the same company.

Sita’s family is an example of many migrant families that sponsors support through the daycare program in Bangalore — a region of the country and the world where there is a big need for these kinds of services.  

According to a 2020 UNICEF report, every fifth migrant in India is a child. And in 2011, the year of the most recent Census, nearly 93 million internal child migrants were dispersed across the country, with today’s figures likely to be much higher. That’s why, in 2017, I joined Holt’s local partner organization, Vathsalya Charitable Trust, to visit a site where migrant families lived in Bangalore and assess the needs of the children and their families. What I saw was beyond what words could describe. One site housed more than 500 migrant families and their children, each in extremely small plastic tent housing near a construction site where many of the parents worked. They had no electricity or running water. A large number of small children on bare feet ran around the site. One could tell they did not attend daycare or preschool.

In India, families move to Bangalore or other big cities to find jobs so they can grow their income and provide for their children. Child migrants are often vulnerable because they lack healthcare and don’t have enough to eat, causing them to grow easily sick and malnourished. Children who are a bit older may work to help support their family while young child migrants, ages 3-5, have no one to watch them during the day while their parents work. My immediate thought when I visited in 2017 was the possible abuse the children may experience while unsupervised all day. 

The need for safe daycare programming was obvious.

Today, Holt sponsors and donors support two daycare programs for migrant children that provide a safe place for them to play, study and grow while their parents work. The program also prepares the children with skills they will need to be successful when they start public school. Parents are engaged with daycare teachers and programs to support their children’s learning and development, and many children have successfully gone on to Grade 1 after attending the daycare program.

During my recent visit, I left the daycare with the image of Sita confidently leading the classroom. Thank you for supporting your sponsored child, and for supporting vital services for children like Holt’s daycare program in India and other early education programs in countries around the world. Thank you for giving children a chance to gain new skills and grow their confidence!

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The post Safe Daycare for Migrant Children in India appeared first on Holt International.

Three-year-old Dipika walks through the door, clutching her mother’s hand. After getting signed in, she walks wide-eyed down the hall where her mom gives her a hug before dropping her off in the classroom. Within seconds, Dipika’s eyes brim over with tears, joining a roomful of other bawling 3-year-olds.

This sound coming from the 3- and 4-year-old room is in sharp contrast to the colorful walls, toys and smiling staff throughout this building.

It’s the first day of the first week of daycare. So while the older kids bound back to their classrooms with familiarity and excitement, this isn’t the case with these youngest ones. Their teachers try to console and distract them with toys, songs and comforting words, but it isn’t doing much.  Because when you’re 3 and it’s one of your first times ever away from your mom, daycare is new, unknown and scary.

But here in Bangalore, India — even right here at the Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT) daycare — the children aren’t the only ones who feel this way. Many of the parents are scared, too.

“When I first came to Bangalore,” says Ana Kria, “I didn’t go out anywhere for two years.” The mother of two boys, 7 and 5, who attend the daycare, Ana Kria and her family used to live in Veru, a smaller town in the neighboring province.

“Everything was new for me,” she says about moving to this city of over 12 million people. “The language was new, the people were new, the environment was new… I was afraid to go out.”

She is not alone in feeling this way. Over 139 million people in India today are considered internal migrants. These are families like Ana Kria’s, who leave rural poverty and move to the city in hopes of finding work and a better life. But when they get here — whether it’s Mumbai or Delhi or in this southern city of Bangalore — migrant families rarely find what they hoped for. Today, millions and millions of migrants are still stuck in poverty — only now in an overcrowded and overwhelming urban setting.

Not only is moving to Bangalore scary because of its newness and unfamiliarity, but because it can be hard to survive here. And when families fight for survival, families are in danger of breaking down.

The single earner in her family, Sandia works as a house maid and provides for her four daughters, as well as her aging mother. Her husband doesn’t live with them anymore — he went back to their village. When Sandia’s third pregnancy brought her twin girls, making them a family with four daughters, he deserted them. He wanted sons, not daughters.

Her husband wanted to place their twin daughters into an institution, to relinquish their parental rights. But Sandia refused. Although, with her small income, she saw few other options.

Just like Sandia and her family, many migrant families face harsh, heartbreaking circumstances like these.

Most of them live in impoverished slum communities in one-room, often dirt-floored homes. Most of the mothers work as cooks or maids in wealthier families’ homes. Fathers work as rickshaw drivers or construction workers.

“Most parents are illiterate here,” says Hepzibah Sharmila, the executive director of VCT. “And about one percent of the parents know English.” Without knowing English — which has become the language of higher education, Indian media and production, and a prerequisite for nearly all high-paying jobs — and certainly without knowing how to read and write in any language at all, they have few job options. Certainly none that pay well. So while parents, particularly mothers, work exceptionally hard to provide for their children, they have little to show for it.

Any money they do make goes toward their family’s most basic needs — things like food, shelter and clothing. Within the context of survival, preschool or daycare is seen as a luxury. It’s simply not an option for most migrant families. But for working parents, daycare is anything but a luxury. It’s a necessity.

When children don’t go to daycare, they either stay home alone — where they are vulnerable to abusive neighbors and dangers of all kinds — or they go to work with their parents. But this can be dangerous too. Often, these children end up “helping” their parents with their work — essentially becoming free child labor for their parents’ employers.

For some families in Bangalore, however, there is now a third option… An option made possible by child sponsors.

The Migrant Families’ Daycare

In a four-story building in the middle of several impoverished neighborhoods of migrant families, 330 children are being dropped off for the day. Although the VCT daycare is the only option most families have, it is as high quality as the most expensive of daycares in the city, perhaps even better. Each child at this school has a Holt sponsor.

Some walls are painted with a full underwater scene of brightly colored fish. In classrooms for the older children, posters promote empathy and being kind to one another. As they drop their children off, parents smile and thank the staff before they head off to work.

As children settle into their classrooms, their teachers greet each one by name and with a smile. One class starts off with a song in English about fruits and vegetables; the 4- and 5-year-olds practice threading a shoelace through a wooden board; in the youngest classroom, the kids sit on a mat and follow their teacher’s instructions to jump, raise their hands up and dance to the music that’s playing.

“We hope to give one-on-one attention to each child,” says Sharmila. “We feel that every child should be the focus. [They learn] education, health and hygiene. They should always feel like it’s a family here.”

And part of being like an extended family to each child means meeting their most critical needs. For most children here, their most critical need is for food.

They Come to School Hungry

At mid-morning, the children file down into the lower level of the building – one large room where the children patiently sit in uneven lines on large rugs on the floor. It’s snack time! This morning, their snack is roasted nuts — warm, and full of the protein they need to make it through the day. A couple hours later it’s time for lunch. Today, it’s a hardboiled egg with rice and vegetables.

“We make sure to give them all the food they need for the day while they’re here,” says Sharmila, “because they might not be eating anything else at home.”

“We make sure to give them all the food they need for the day while they’re here, because they might not be eating anything else at home.”

Hepzibah Sharmila, executive director of Vathsalya Charitable Trust

Many migrant children subsist only on the leftovers that their parents bring back from the homes of their wealthy employers. Each day brings the question of whether or not they will eat. As they drop off their children, parents — with tears in their eyes — share this heartbreaking need.

“When I came [to VCT] with the twins, they were underweight and malnourished,” Sandia says about her twin daughters, who first came here at 2 months old. “Because of VCT and the nutritious food they get here, they have gained much weight.”

And because VCT helped meet this basic need for food, Sandia had hope of successfully parenting her four daughters, even without the support and income of her husband.

“But without VCT,” she says, “I would have given my children to an institution.”

Early Childhood Education in Bangalore

While VCT operates as a daycare, it is so much more than a childcare center. In function, it’s more like a preschool, or informal elementary school.

There’s the pre-nursery class for 3- and 4-year-olds, kindergarten for 4- and 5-year-olds, upper kindergarten for 5- and 6-year-olds and a special informal school for older children who are very behind academically, learning the local language and trying to catch up with their peers.

Walking through the building, children are spoken to in English, they sing songs in English and seem to have a good understanding of it. In Bangalore, this skill alone is one that will set them up for success in the future. It’s a skill that almost none of their parents have. But it’s one that they have come to value.

At her moment of greatest crisis, when her husband left their family and moved back to the village, Sandia considered moving back, too, with her four daughters. Maybe in the village, she thought, they could all remain together. But she decided against it. Because there, she says, people don’t value education for girls.

“In the village, they don’t give much importance to education,” she says. “So when girls are 15 or 16, they give you off in marriage. I don’t want that. I want my girls to be educated so they can stand on their own feet.”

In the village, they don’t give much importance to education. So when girls are 15 or 16, they give you off in marriage. I don’t want that. I want my girls to be educated so they can stand on their own feet.”

Sandia, a mother of four daughters

Because of VCT, Sandia’s children not only remain together as a family, but their extended family here at VCT makes sure that each of them has the strong early-education foundation they need to thrive.

At VCT, families unite through this common thread — a great desire to see their children educated.

Sundr is a construction worker and the father of four daughters, three of whom are old enough to attend VCT.

“Here, the girls learn to write the alphabet, they learn to speak words in English, they’re singing songs,” he says. “I could not have dreamed of paying for their education somewhere else because it is very expensive. If VCT were not here, I would have kept my kids at home.”

But instead, they are here — learning, playing, developing and already being empowered for a successful future.

And the learning at VCT goes beyond academics. Children also learn about health and hygiene, things like eating more fruits and vegetables, and the importance of bathing regularly. They develop through drama, music, dance, art and physical exercise — all things they would never have the chance to learn elsewhere.

“Because he comes to VCT, he is learning and developing so much,” Ana Kria, who was once afraid of living in Bangalore, says about her youngest son.

“I am very inspired by looking at him,” she continues. “The way he speaks, the way he behaves — all of that he has learned from VCT. Now, I am learning from my younger son. Every day he wants to take a bath and keep himself clean. He wants to speak very neat and clear sentences. Even if I make a mistake, he teaches me!”

But the children aren’t the only ones who are learning. The parents are learning, too.

Hope for Migrant Families in India

“Once you set your mind to learn,” says Sharmila, “surely all of us can learn.” This philosophy drives her in her work with children at the center, as well as their parents.

VCT facilitates peer support groups for mothers of children in the daycare. These groups are safe spaces where they can encourage each other and share about their lives and difficulties. Through the support of sponsors and donors, many of them have also begun income-generating projects through VCT — small businesses where through sewing or operating a small store or even becoming a driver they can earn a steady income to support their children.

For families who migrate to Bangalore, life can become suddenly harsh and hopeless. Maybe they feel afraid — not too unlike children in VCT’s pre-nursery class, who find themselves in a new place and seemingly alone for the first time.

But they are not alone.

After several minutes, the 3- and 4-year-olds calm down, and begin enjoying the fun toys, music and other children around them. They begin to learn. This is the beginning of an education that will serve them for a lifetime. Because they are here, they get to play, dance, sing, jump, learn and develop. Because they are here, there is hope that they will continue to go to school, find autonomy in their lives and someday overcome poverty once and for all.

And maybe the same can happen for their families.

Over time and with the support of sponsors and donors, opportunity to grow, and an encouraging community, fear can lend way to hope.

“I feel very happy now,” says Ana Kria, “VCT is a gift for me.”

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The post The Migrant Daycare in India appeared first on Holt International.

Avni pulls her husband and son’s stiff, sun-dried pants and shirts off the frame of wooden scaffolding built outside her home. She climbs the seven unfinished concrete stairs, and drifts through the wide, cement hole where a double door and massive picture windows will someday lead into the lobby of a six-story apartment building. But, at that point, her family won’t live here anymore. It will be time for them to move on in search of another job, and another home.

Avni is 26 years old, and the mother of three children — an 11-year-old daughter and two sons, Basha, 9, and Mapasha, 6. She is strikingly beautiful, and has a kind, shy smile that peeks through the whole time she speaks, the little ring in her nose glistening. Her feet are bare under her purple sari, except for a thin, gold toe ring, which married women commonly wear in India as a token of luck in marriage.

Avni and her family migrated from their rural village to Bangalore, India six years ago for work, hopeful that they could find better jobs and make a better life for themselves and their children.

They weren’t the only ones.

A booming metropolis, Bangalore — the unofficial tech capital of India — is growing at an unprecedented rate. Sprawling and vast, Bangalore is marked my miles upon miles of towering buildings, new development and urbanization. On nearly every street, evidence of growth is visible in the empty frames of partially complete apartment complexes, high-rise buildings and smaller, commercial businesses.

And while the plentiful jobs that new development brings is good news overall, some of the effects of rapid urbanization and mass migration are less pretty — particularly on the children of migrant workers.

In the shadow of nearly every new building is a tent city — a temporary neighborhood built from tarps and scrap materials, often without plumbing or electricity, where entire migrant families will live for the 2-4 years they are employed to build.

Migrant families and children, like Avini, Basha and Mapasha, are some of the most vulnerable in India. They come from the poorest regions, are often uneducated or illiterate, and tend to be a part of lower castes. If they also happen to have darker skin, it can make them even more of a target for discrimination. Because of these factors, migrant families have very little ability to change their economic situation. It’s unlikely that hard work alone will enable them to achieve lasting stability or build a substantial savings. Employers pay them the lowest wages. Schools discriminate against the children, and prevent them from attending. If they are the victims of a serious crime, they are unlikely to report it because they know that police are unlikely to punish a perpetrator from a higher class — or even bother investigating the crime. There is very little social welfare, so families are unlikely to receive nutritional aid, medical care or family assistance from the government.

Mary Paul is the director of Vathsalya Charitable Trust, Holt’s long-time partner organization in Bangalore. She has lived and worked in this region most of her life, finding creative and innovative ways to care for orphaned and vulnerable children, and provide struggling families from impoverished communities with the support and services they need to grow strong, stable and self-sufficient.

Several years ago, Mary Paul began to notice an influx of children from migrant families right in her own neighborhood. “We would look around at all the building projects and see kids just laying around,” she says.

Children of migrant families are extremely vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, trafficking and child labor violations. They often spend their days alone and unsupervised in the unsafe conditions of the construction sites. They may not have enough to eat, and very few attend school. Throughout India, more than 11.9 million children aren’t in school — often due to poverty, discrimination or family instability. Children of migrant worker families face even greater barriers to education. In addition to the cost of tuition, many schools will not admit students from migrant families, knowing they may leave at any time.

Recognizing this growing need among children of migrant families in Bangalore, Mary Paul soon came up with an idea of how to help them. “I would think ‘we should open a daycare so these children can get an education and be taken care of during the day,’” she says of every time she passed another construction site full of children.

Two years ago, VCT shifted focus — moving away from adoption, and toward programs aimed at keeping some of India’s most vulnerable and at-risk children and families together, and in particular those who had migrated for work. VCT first opened a daycare in 2014 so children from migrant families wouldn’t be alone during the day. The daycare grew into an informal school, and now a formal school.

One of the first families they met after opening the daycare was Avni’s.

Avni never had the opportunity to attend school as a child. She is illiterate, but she speaks slowly and confidently. Her husband completed the first grade. Avni had her first child shortly after her parents arranged her marriage when she was barely 15. When her husband decided to travel from Andhra Pradesh to Bangalore in search of work, Avni was left with a difficult decision. Traditionally, orthodox Muslim women don’t leave their homes, but Avni was intent that she would not be separated from her husband and sons. However, her decision to migrate with her husband was not without sacrifice. She had to leave her daughter behind.

Upon arriving in Bangalore, Avni and her husband quickly found jobs. They met a man who hired Avni and her husband to build a six-story apartment building. Kind and caring, the employer allowed Avni and her family to live on the first floor of the building rent free, at least while the space is unfinished. He also pays Avni for helping her husband build, and encourages her to keep her sons in school. However, the standard of living is somewhat shocking, even in India.

The bottom floor of the building where Avni lives is large and open, with a few electric light bulbs hanging from hung cords and wires. Stacks of wood and bricks and crates of materials and tools litter the room. The floor is dusty, unfinished concrete, and the framed-but-unfilled windows fill the space with light in the day — but leave the family completely exposed to weather and intruders at night. In the back corner, a small room without windows is framed by bricks, with a small, blue door where Avni, her husband and their children sleep. Inside, the room is packed with scraps of wood, building materials and a small, single-sized mat with a few crumpled blankets. At first look, it’s hard to distinguish where everyone would even fit to lie down, and there is no ventilation or even a window. Outside the room along one wall, Avni built a small fireplace out of three or four bricks, and she builds a wood fire to cook meals for her family. She also built a couple of small shelves, where she stores some recycled plastic bottles with spices and pickled food, a few pots and pans and one plastic water jug. They have electricity, but no running water or toilet.

But Avni says she is happy. Basha and Mapasha attend VCT’s daycare program and for the first time are receiving an education. This is opening new doors for the boys, and transforming the way Avni views education. It’s also keeping the children safe.

Education is extremely powerful in India, helping children overcome barriers related to class, race, gender and caste. If a girl from a poor family is able to stay in school, it is truly the best chance she has to create greater stability for herself, find a better job, and raise healthy children. When a girl is educated, she also recognizes the value of education — and will go above and beyond to ensure her children are also educated. Through education, children have the power to break the cycle of poverty forever. But sadly, school isn’t free, and the cost of tuition and supplies is often out of reach for the families VCT serves.

Tuition is only about Rs. 6,000 rupees per year for a child to attend VCT’s school, or about $100 U.S., and almost every child has their tuition waved thanks to sponsors and donors through Holt. However, the average middle class, college-educated person in Bangalore may make around $300 U.S. per month. Housing costs, food costs and more are all extremely high, with rent prices soaring nearly as high as costs in some of the cheaper regions of the U.S. Even for parents with education and good jobs, extra income is tight. For struggling families, those in lower castes, those in impoverished communities or those who are illiterate, they may make less than $1.25 per day — putting the cost of tuition entirely out of reach for their children.

The VCT staff — a team of strong, educated female teachers, social workers and aids — do far more than just run a school. They also visit the homes of each child and regularly check in with the families, helping them set goals for the future and access any resources they need to grow more stable and healthy.

In 2013, Holt began an ambitious initiative, aimed at completely revolutionizing the way we approach nutrition and feeding for orphaned and vulnerable children. We partnered with Portland, Oregon-based non-profit SPOON Foundation and together, we retrained caregivers, school teachers and social workers in four countries about child nutrition, tracking children’s health and growth, feeding techniques and more. VCT was one partner program excited to receive the training — and to implement it widely. Initially intended for orphaned and abandoned children living at VCT, we soon realized the program would benefit children at the daycare and informal school, significantly cutting back the rates of malnutrition — the largest killer of children under 5 — as well as anemia, which stunts children’s brain growth and development. Since implementing the Orphan Nutrition Program (ONP) for children in VCT’s daycare program, the children’s health has improved significantly. They’ve seen children’s energy level rise, as well as their ability to actively engage and retain school lessons.

“We’ve seen a growth spurt in children in the last six months,” says VCT’s educational coordinator, Joyce Ranjan. “This includes children in our program for migrant families. The parents are so thankful. They want the trainings to continue.”

For children of migrant families, education about nutrition is especially critical to the health and safety of the family.

Parents who have migrated for work often take extremely demanding jobs, both in terms of the physical output and the number of hours worked. They are busy and exhausted. Before school or after work, cooking is another time-consuming and work-intensive task, since most meal preparation is done over a small, open fire where parents squat and hunch to prepare rice or popular tortilla-like chapatis. Rather than expend the time and energy to cook, many parents would give their child a few rupees to purchase chips or cake from the bakery. While these foods would fill the child’s belly, he or she wouldn’t get any nourishment, and would eventually grow malnourished.

“We tell parents to spend their money on fruits and milk,” Joyce says. “Parents come to VCT once per month on Sunday for trainings, and we talk a lot about what children should eat.”

In India, especially in impoverished communities, it’s not uncommon for parents to give even toddler-aged children coffee and tea instead of milk, thinking it’s a cheaper alternative and not understanding the critical nutrition that milk provides. These types of feeding misconceptions are common, but easy to dispel.

“Parents want to do the right thing,” Joyce says. “But often, no one has taught them what is the best. They’ve learned from the way their mothers did things.”

Even for adults, the education they receive at VCT is transformative. Most of the parents whose children attend the migrant school are illiterate or have very little education. When an adult can’t read or write, they also struggle to protect themselves from abuse or exploitation, and fearing that they may not have the knowledge to file a police report or argue their case, many uneducated adults are unlikely to report even the most serious of crimes. Furthermore, their job opportunities are limited and their pay dictated by their employer.

VCT has a strong community and parent education program, with a simple premise. Rather than hold onto wisdom — like what they learned during nutrition training through the ONP — they pass it on to parents, who pass the same learnings onto their children. This is especially important for women and mothers, who Mary Paul says hold the keys to massive community transformation and growth. By educating women and mothers, they also fight gender inequality, which is pervasive in India.

“When you educate a girl, you educate a generation,” Mary Paul says. “What happens here is a woman really has more influence over her children, and what we found is that if you educate a man, he will hold his knowledge. But an educated mother will see to it that her child is educated — and it doesn’t matter if her child is a boy or a girl. She will want her child in school.”

Female education, and keeping girls in school past puberty, is a critical goal of VCT. Once girls are mature, parents are less likely to send their child to school. Instead, girls are married off or put to work to help bring home income to their family. This strips girls of their ability to reach for their dreams, get better paying jobs that allow them to support their children, and choose when, and if, to marry and start a family of their own. But convincing families to do something different can be challenging.

“We tell mothers that the girls don’t have to be like their mothers,” Joyce says. And, truly, that is a totally new way of thinking. So much of what VCT — and many of our partners around the world — do is empower parents through education. Especially for mothers, who tend to take on most of the responsibility of child rearing, education can truly transform their family and community.

“We have mothers come to the school and say, ‘What’s the point of my daughter going to school? We need money.’ And they pull their daughter from school. We try to fight it. We try to teach the parents, but it doesn’t always work. Even if you go to the police, they will probably just turn their heads. But, we have also seen many mothers change their entire way of thinking and parenting. Now, they tell other mothers about the importance of keeping their girl child in school.”

Joyce Ranjan, educational coordinator at Holt partner VCT

Avni says that as an adult, she doesn’t really have the desire to learn to read and write. However, she is happy that Basha and Mapasha are learning these skills and receiving nutritious meals each day. She says that her children have grown taller and gained weight since they started school. They are healthier now and have more energy, and they hate missing a day at VCT, even if they are sick. Avni says that she has learned a lot about the importance of education from parent meetings at VCT. This prompted her to enroll her daughter, who lives with her grandparents in Andra Pradesh, in a local vernacular school. While Avni still hopes her daughter marries soon after completing her basic education, this kind of transition of thought is exactly what motivates the VCT staff — and why they see women, particularly mothers, as a critically important part of their success formula.

“We have mothers come to the school and say, ‘What’s the point of my daughter going to school? We need money,’” Joyce says. “And they pull their daughter from school. We try to fight it. We try to teach the parents, but it doesn’t always work. Even if you go to the police, they will probably just turn their heads. But, we have also seen many mothers change their entire way of thinking and parenting. Now, they tell other mothers about the importance of keeping their girl child in school.”

So much of a girl’s education is about more than just reading, writing and math. In India, sexual abuse is rampant in girls as young as 3. Especially for children in lower castes or poor families, they have few protections from abuse and fear the stigma and shame that repeatedly victimizes girls, but fails to prosecute men. Often, for a poor or uneducated woman or child, the police will just turn away from the crime. In India, there have even been news stories of police arresting women who report abuse. Many girls don’t even know they are being abused, so VCT trains girls — and boys — how to identify and report abuse. This education is helping to curb abuse and keep children in school.

“My goal is to educate as many girls as possible,” Joyce says.

Bright and quick to learn, both Basha and Mapasha are picking up reading, writing and English speaking skills rapidly. It was this type of student success — seeing the children’s potential — that inspired VCT to grow their program and offer more tools to the students.

Just this year, VCT moved from offering informal education — meaning they couldn’t offer a graduation certificate — to formal education. They plan to grow with their students, adding a new grade level each year so no child ages out of their school. In the short term, this plan will work. However, in the long term, VCT knows that they will eventually outgrow their current space. They are trusting that God will provide a new building sometime in the next five years, so their plan can come to fruition.

Eventually, they want to offer a program that matches students with loving foster families, which would allow children to stay in school even if their family must move away for work for a while. And it would boost the local economy, helping to support even more families. That’s for the future. But for today, the teachers are content as they watch parents pick their children up from school and daycare, excited to hear what their child learned that day. The children speak the English words they learned, and the parents smile and repeat the words out loud. The children and parents hug and smile, and Mary Paul and Joyce smile, too.

Billie Loewen | Former Holt Team Member

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The post Growth and Transformation appeared first on Holt International.