Why I Believe in Holt

Thoa Bui, Holt’s senior advisor for international programs, grew up in post-war Vietnam one of seven children to a widowed mother. Here, she reflects on the difference two Holt programs would have made in her family’s lives: educational sponsorship, and programs that empower families to earn an income and provide for their children.

Growing up in Vietnam, Thoa rose every morning at 4 a.m. to open her family’s noodle shop. Still dark outside, she would ride her bicycle to the market to buy vegetables and then work until it was time to go to school.

Even on cold, rainy mornings, she woke up before dawn — and summoned her two younger siblings from where they slept to help prepare the shop for breakfast. They were especially sleepy on cold winter mornings.

“The whole time growing up, I did not understand why I could not sleep every night,” shares Thoa, now a petite mother of two in her 50s with neat shoulder-length hair and a warm and gentle but hardworking nature.

Thoa’s sister later told her that they couldn’t sleep because they were cold — they couldn’t afford warm blankets.

Once Thoa graduated college and began to earn money, she bought high-quality blankets imported from Japan for her mom and siblings.  “The first thing I did when I made money was to buy good blankets for everyone,” she says.

Thoa has lived in the U.S. with her family since 2008 — and now serves as Holt’s senior advisor for international programs — but her childhood in post-war Vietnam is never far from her mind. She was one of seven children — nine including two siblings who both died of malaria within five days of each other.

Her family lived a relatively comfortable life near Danang, in central Vietnam. But when her father died suddenly of a stroke, her mother struggled to run his business and care for her children on her own.

Thoa was 7. Her mother was pregnant with her youngest sister at the time.

“It’s hard, as children growing up and seeing… loan sharks getting into your home every day and then yelling and screaming at your mother, demanding payment. That’s why I really believe in what Holt is doing — because it does help a lot of people.”

Slowly, they used up all the resources her father had left them, and Thoa watched as her family’s possessions began to disappear from their home. The black and white TV. The nice speakers from Japan. The refrigerator.

To provide for her seven children, her mom was forced to sell their belongings.

But Thoa’s mom was smart, resourceful and determined.  She decided to open a shop selling homemade breakfast noodles — a business that she knew how to run, and that she could manage while caring for Thoa and her siblings.  But with no savings and no collateral, she was forced to take out a loan at 20% interest per month — or, as Thoa calls it, a “shark loan.”

Loan sharks prey on people living in poverty, offering money they desperately need to start a business or just to buy food for their family — and then harass them for payment, aggressively demanding they give up the daily wages that are often all they have to live on. 

“It gets people into deep poverty, and they cannot really get out,” Thoa says. “They tear families apart … I think that’s when I started to have the realization of what poverty really means.”

Looking back, more than 40 years later, Thoa gets emotional thinking of that time in her life — and of what her mom had to go through to provide for her and her siblings. 

“It’s hard, as children growing up and seeing… loan sharks getting into your home every day and then yelling and screaming at your mother, demanding payment,” she says, trailing off as tears well up in her eyes. “That’s why I really believe in what Holt is doing — because it does help a lot of people.”

But it’s not just what Holt is doing. It’s what Holt sponsors and donors are doing with their heartfelt gifts to help families earn income — and overcome poverty — in countries around the world.

Donor-Funded Microloans: A Viable Path From Poverty

In the countries where Holt works — from Ethiopia and Uganda to Cambodia, India and Vietnam — many parents feel helpless to support their children when jobs are scarce and stable work requires specialized skills or higher education that’s often inaccessible to families living in poverty.

Households headed by single parents — especially single mothers — are often the most vulnerable.

In some countries, such as Korea and the Philippines, Holt sponsors and donors help provide job skills training to single mothers facing stigma and discrimination. In most cases, Holt empowers women like Thoa’s mom — women who suddenly find themselves the sole providers for their children after their husband dies or leaves the family.

Sometimes it’s the gift of a sewing machine from Holt’s Gifts of Hope catalog that comes with small business training so a mother learns how to sew and sell clothing for profit. It may be gardening tools so a family can grow vegetables to eat, selling the surplus in a nearby marketplace. Or the gift of a goat, chickens or a cow — providing abundant milk and eggs for a family.

But quite often, it’s a small business microgrant or zero-interest loan that empowers a mother to start her own unique business — one that meets a need in her community and that provides enough stable and reliable income for her to provide for herself and her children.

The predatory lending practices to which Thoa’s mom fell prey are now banned in the U.S., but they are still rampant in developing countries around the world.

Had her mom had access to a zero-interest microloan to start her noodle shop, Thoa says she never would have endured abuse and harassment from loan sharks. Like the women in Holt microloan programs today, she would have saved all the money she earned to support her children — instead of falling deeper into debt.

“There was nothing like that — there was no Holt, for example, offering microloans at that time,” Thoa says.

Holt’s first income-generating program actually began in Vietnam, just before the end of the war in 1975. Like today, Holt supported care centers for children who had been orphaned or whose families couldn’t care for them. But our team in country soon recognized that in many cases, struggling families could in fact care for their children — given the support and resources they needed.

“They were seeing a lot of birth parents coming in saying they wanted to relinquish their child,” explains John Williams, who helped develop Holt’s first income-generating program in Vietnam and later served as Holt president and CEO. “If given an alternative to consider keeping their family together, that’s what they were looking for. They just were under so much stress — their child was suffering from malnutrition, health issues, etc.”

But when Holt offered help to support their child and keep their family together, they no longer wanted to relinquish their children. Within a few months, Holt’s first income-generating program was thriving.

“It was much like many of [Holt’s] family strengthening programs today,” John says. “The role of social workers and case workers was to determine what the interests, abilities and skills of the family were. … It was all about finding out what the interests of the community or village were and helping them develop that interest into an income-generating program that created independence, not dependency.”

Like today, families started small businesses like sewing or tailoring, or raised animals like ducks or chickens to provide sustainable food and income. The goal was to help each family get on their feet and provide for their children, keeping the family together.

“That’s how far small amounts of money can go when it goes to the right people in the right way at the right time. It changes people’s lives in a way that we cannot even imagine. And we know they can now provide for their children’s medical, nutritional and educational needs.”

“It was the first time that Holt began to broaden its services to children with a list of priorities — preserve the birth family, domestic adoption, international adoption …with no one being better than the other,” John says, describing the model of service that Holt has long ascribed to, and later advocated for when we sent delegates to help draft the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. “It’s based on the best interest of the child.”

But as the war ended, Holt left the country — and didn’t return until they could safely reestablish programs and fully serve children and families again, in 1989.

Thoa didn’t start working for Holt Vietnam until nine years later, in 1998. She later traveled to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship to earn a master’s degree in social work, and then began working with children and families living in other countries where Holt works — particularly in South and Southeast Asia. 

What she saw when she first traveled to these regions reminded her of what she’d seen growing up in Vietnam after the war — extreme poverty, and predators looking to exploit people in desperate situations.

“When I travel to Cambodia, India, and I see signs saying, ‘Hey, if you need loans, quick loans, call this number’ … that’s exactly how the poor people get into the trap … That’s why I really love the models of grants or microloans, or the self-help groups that we have in Cambodia,” Thoa says, referring to a model Holt developed in Cambodia where families collectively save their money and then provide low-interest loans to group members so they can start or grow small businesses.

After developing microloan programs in Cambodia and Vietnam, Thoa encouraged Holt’s partners in India to replicate the model.

“I said, ‘We don’t have the income-generating program in this country, but I see you have a lot of advertising for loans for poor people … and let me share with you what happens when these poor people keep tapping into that money,’” Thoa says she shared with Hepzibah Sharmila, who leads our partner organization, VCT, in Bangalore. Thoa traveled with Sharmila to Vietnam and other countries to show her how Holt’s income-generating model works — and to introduce her to families that had successfully graduated from the program.

“When we give them $200, $300, then that helps the mother start a small business and achieve financial independence. And from there, they can provide for the basic needs of their children,” Thoa says. “But if they don’t have these opportunities, they would go to the loan sharks. And they could never get out. Their children could never get out, and they could never escape poverty.”

Driven to Live a Different Life

Deep in debt to loan sharks, with seven children to support, Thoa’s mom continued to struggle well into Thoa’s teen years. She was so exhausted that she often fell asleep on the floor of their home.

“It was so tiring, you know, to raise seven different children all by yourself … All the children were so small and young and everybody needed education. Everybody needed food,” Thoa says.

But like so many hardworking mothers and fathers and grandparents in Holt programs today, Thoa’s mom could still hardly afford to feed her children.   

One time, when Thoa was sick, her mom was able to purchase a small portion of meat that she guarded from her other children — giving it to Thoa so that she could regain her strength.

“My mom pointed to it and said, ‘Hey, this is just for you because you’re sick’ and nobody should touch that because I needed nutrition … Like a small portion of meat. And I was the only one who could have that meat,” Thoa says.

Thoa’s older siblings gave up on the dream of further education. But from a young age, Thoa knew that completing her education was more than just a dream. It was her way out.

When Thoa’s mom opened the noodle shop, Thoa was by her mom’s side — opening and closing and running the business every day.

“I worked very hard to help her, just because I love her so much and I understood, you know, how it was,” she says.

But every night, when she finally finished food and business prep around 9-10 p.m., Thoa shifted her focus — studying until midnight or the early hours of the morning.  “I really had this drive … I had to get out … I just could not foresee the rest of my life being like this,” she says. “So I studied very hard.”

When Thoa passed the university entrance exams, news spread quickly.

“The neighbors were so proud because it was very rare to see a kid [from our community] pass the university exam,” Thoa says. “We were so poor.”

No one felt more pride than Thoa’s mom. “I was excited. She was so proud,” Thoa says.

But Thoa also knew that her mom couldn’t afford the tuition. “I said, ‘Hey, you know, you already have so many burdens. I don’t want another burden on you. I will not go to university,” she told her, promising instead to find a job to help support her family.  

But then her mom said something that surprised her.

“She said that all her life she did not have a chance for education and that’s why her life is hard,” Thoa says of her mother, who never finished elementary school. “She believed education could give me a different life.” As Thoa was the first child in the family to pass the university entrance exam, her mom was determined to give her that opportunity.

 “Whatever I have to do, I will send you to university,” she told Thoa.

So she raised chickens. She ran the noodle shop. She sold some more of her belongings. And she asked her extended family for help. Some contributed small amounts as gifts. Others loaned her the money. Eventually, she cobbled together the tuition for Thoa’s first semester.

“I looked at her and I felt like, that’s my mother. And all these grandmothers and these mothers around the world who are struggling every day, but who are trying their best — every day — to provide for the basic needs of their children. They all hope and work hard for a better life for their children.”

Like always, Thoa worked incredibly hard in school and was always the top one or two in her class. She earned scholarships from her grades. A good singer, she performed on stage for the university to get some additional scholarships.  And she worked any job she could find to pay for her degree and support her family. She promoted shampoos for Proctor & Gamble. She provided English tutoring. And she continued helping her mom in the noodle shop. Some of her professors learned about her situation and they offered her an opportunity to teach evening classes as well as a part-time job at the university. 

“Basically, what I did was I did everything on Earth,” she says.

But she saved everything she earned to support her education, and to support her mother and her family.

Later, once she graduated, she helped her mom get out of debt, and buy back all the appliances and furniture she had sold to support her and her siblings. She even helped her mom pay for her two younger siblings go to university, too. “Both are quite successful now in their lives,” Thoa says of her younger siblings. One went into economics, the other studied English.

Thoa says the mindset of helping your family and community is deeply rooted in her culture, as it is in many of the cultures and communities where Holt works around the world. “We don’t want to leave anyone behind,” Thoa says — offering Holt’s university program in Cambodia as an example. Through this program, donors provide full scholarships for high-performing students from impoverished backgrounds to attend university. 

Through our partner KBF in the Philippines, Holt also empowers youth aging out of orphanages to gain independent living skills and go to college. After they complete their degrees and begin earning money, they often go back and help their siblings. Many even return to their communities to volunteer or even work as social workers or teachers.

“Many graduates become self-reliant and just want to give back what they have received through the program by mentoring, sponsoring or working in NGOs,” Thoa explains.

It’s the same motivation that drew Thoa to a humanitarian career devoted to helping children and families escape a life of poverty and desperation.

“I understand their struggles,” she says. “I understand what they’re going through … I just want every one of them to get out and have a better life.”

Looking back on her own life story — and on the many lives transformed through Holt programs around the world — Thoa says she profoundly believes in two of Holt’s donor-funded programs in particular to help children and families lift themselves a life of poverty: educational sponsorship, and programs that empower families to generate income.  

“To see these women who started to make money after they set up their shops, and then say, ‘Hey, I make good money’ … That’s how far small amounts of money can go when it goes to the right people in the right way at the right time. It changes people’s lives in a way that we cannot even imagine,” she says. “And we know they can now provide for their children’s medical, nutritional and educational needs.”

Thoa is especially thankful for the small donations she received from family members so that she could go to college — small donations that she compares to the microgrants Holt donors provide families in need today.

“[If not for those donations], I probably would have ended up quitting and become one of the sellers in the street like everybody else,” she says.

It All Traces Back to Her

Thoa’s mother passed away several years ago. But long before she passed, Thoa wrote her a letter. She had just left Vietnam and she wrote from the airplane, en route to her new life working for Holt in the U.S.

“’I just want you to know that without you and the sacrifice back in the day, there’s no way I could be where I am today,’” Thoa says she wrote. “I really wanted her to know that I knew it was a tremendous amount of sacrifice and undertaking and I wanted her to know that I was very grateful.”

Years later, at her daughter’s college graduation, Thoa again thought of her mother and the sacrifice she made. “I thought, ‘This is so profound. … At one point, I wanted to give up on my education because of thinking there was not enough money … And now, another generation of women — my daughter — can finish their college education. And it all traces back to her.”

Still today, Thoa always thinks of her mom whenever she visits families who have benefited from Holt’s income-generating programs — especially the single and widowed mothers who are caring for children on their own. 

“We visited this woman who was 76 years old, a grandma who was part of the income-generating program … I looked at her,” Thoa shares, “and I felt like, that’s my mother. And all these grandmothers and these mothers around the world who are struggling every day, but who are trying their best — every day — to provide for the basic needs of their children. They all hope and work hard for a better life for their children.”