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

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

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

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

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

Once quiet and withdrawn, Sonith is now a confident and bright little boy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it wasn’t always this way.

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

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

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

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

For Dembe, that daily meal made all the difference.

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

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

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Six-year-old Esen couldn’t hold a crayon in his hand when he arrived at kindergarten in Mongolia. Esen has cerebral palsy and using fine motor skills was a big challenge, making eating, drawing and moving around independently difficult. He would often cry and get easily frustrated…

But because of sponsors and donors like you, Esen received the special education support he needed. And things changed drastically!

His teachers provided proper support for his disability, and Esen gained the confidence and encouragement he needed to thrive. Through school lunch and feeding support, he received the nutrients his body needed and — with hard work — he learned how to hold a spoon on his own! His appetite, immune system and overall development have improved dramatically!

Through your support for Holt’s educational programs, Esen received the guidance and care that made all the difference. His motor skills have improved so much that he has become quite the artist! He once struggled to hold a pencil — now he colors vivid shapes and drawings with crayons. He is such a creative, cheerful little boy! Thank you for helping Esen rise to his fullest potential.

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Thailand

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

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

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

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

India

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uganda

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

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

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

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

Colombia

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

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

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

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

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

But first, we must overcome this critical shortfall.   

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

Educational Support at Risk for Children in Mongolia

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

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

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

Vital Medical Care for Women and Children in Uganda

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

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

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

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

Nurturing Foster and Kinship Care for Vulnerable Children in Cambodia

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

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

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

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

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

Emergency Medical Care Around the Globe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And parents and teachers can see the difference it makes!

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

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

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

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In rural Ethiopia, the room echoes with the sound of happy 5- and 6-year-olds — 62 of them! They love coming to this Holt-supported preschool, especially because of their teacher, Ms. Tiblet!

“Kids are like sponges,” Ms. Tiblet says, her voice soft. “They absorb everything around them, so we must ensure that what we impart leaves a positive and lasting impression.”

Thanks to Holt donors, Ms. Tiblet received specialized training in early education. With this knowledge and skill, children in her class are getting a foundation in education, setting them up for years of success in school.

Each school day includes a combination of learning about daily news, letters and numbers, science, health and hygiene, story time, playing outside and more.

This early education is only possible because of your generosity. It’s like you are, from across the world, partnering with Ms. Tiblet to give these children an amazing start to their education.

“Together,” Ms. Tiblet says, “we can create a world where every child thrives.”

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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.

High in the mountains of north Vietnam, Houa and her children were in crisis. Houa’s husband had just passed away from a brain tumor, leaving her the sole provider for her 4- and 5-year-old daughters, and 2-month-old son… Through her fresh grief and caring for her newborn baby, Houa didn’t know how she would provide for her children. 

Even before her husband passed away, life was difficult. Their home was a wooden structure with a dirt floor and leaky roof. Apart from their clothes, they had nearly no other possessions. The girls, Diep and Giang, didn’t have the supplies they needed for school, and they were often hungry. And at just a few months old, Bao was already malnourished. Houa and her husband had worked as farmers, growing cassava, corn and rice, but it was never enough to feed their family — let alone enough to sell to make an income.

Adding to their difficulties, the family belongs to the Hmong minority ethnic group, which is a people group and culture separate from the mainstream Vietnamese culture. Because of this, Houa and her family struggled to communicate in Vietnamese, lived far away from any city, and had limited access to services like healthcare and education.

“We became aware of this family due to their extremely challenging circumstances,” says Loan Nguyen, a case worker at Holt Vietnam.

Yet, when Loan first met Houa and her children, she also saw their resilience — and how with some extra support, they could be empowered to get back on their feet. 

Right away, Holt donors stepped in to help Houa and her children. They received emergency food, and other essentials to meet their basic needs. But they also received Gifts of Hope that would help them become stable and self-reliant in the long-term. One of the biggest, most helpful, gifts they received was two pigs!

These two pigs, with black hair and pink noses, live in a rectangle pigsty made of bricks and cement. Houa has diligently cared for the pigs and helped them grow, knowing that her time and resources would pay off.

And just last year, this came to fruition when the pigs had their first litter of piglets. Houa kept some of the piglets, and sold others to earn critical income for her family.

As Houa’s pigs have more piglets, their family will have a sustainable source of food, manure for their garden to flourish, and income from selling whatever piglets they don’t need themselves.

“This profit has allowed her to provide essential items such as food, meat and clothing for her children,” Loan says, “which is a positive step forward.”

Another new way Houa has worked to support her family is through learning to sew. Just last year, she found a local tailoring shop that produces traditional Hmong clothing. She’s learned how to stitch together and mend this clothing, and now earns an extra $100 a month for her family.

The reason Houa is able to hold this extra job is because of another help from Holt — daycare for her son, Bao.

While Houa works at the tailoring shop and her older girls are at school, Bao goes to a Holt-supported daycare where he receives nutritious meals, milk and support for his health. Today, at 4 years old, he is thriving in his development and early education. His big sisters are thriving too.

“The girls are not only academically excellent, but also possess talents that shine in their school activities,” Loan says. Diep has a beautiful singing voice and is the lead singer in her choir at school. Giang is excelling in her education, and is a leader among her peers.

Despite their intense hardship, all three children — and Houa — are doing well. They’re becoming more healthy, advancing in school and work, and growing in confidence that they can make it on their own.

And this is due in no small part to the generous Gifts of Hope they received in their greatest time of need.

“The family’s progress, no matter how small, is a testament to their determination and the support they have received,” Loan says. “It’s a hopeful sign for a brighter future.”

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