You Can Help a Hungry Child

When you give Food Every Day, you not only help a child learn, play and grow — you help keep their family together.

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In the following Q&A, Paul Kim, Holt’s director of Korea and Mongolia programs, reflects on the history and continued importance of this unique post-adoption service — and shares some of his favorite memories from the past 25 years of leading Holt’s annual heritage tour of Korea.

Q: How did the concept for adoptee heritage tours originate?

A: The idea emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the first generation of Korean adoptees began reaching adolescence. At that time, adoptees were grappling with identity questions — who they were, where they came from, and what their heritage meant. Social work practices then focused on assimilation, encouraging adoptees to forget their birth culture and integrate quickly into American society. But as understanding of adoption evolved, it became clear that this approach was deeply flawed.

Q: It was in fact your father, Dr. David H. Kim, who pioneered the first heritage tour. Can you share more about what inspired him to create this unique service for adoptees? [Note: David Kim was the first employee Harry Holt hired in post-war Korea, and together they created the Holt Adoption Program. David also went on to become executive director of Holt International from 1980 to 1990.]

A: My father began receiving letters from adoptees asking about their origins and Korean history. Most people at that time, even after the Korean War, didn’t know much about Korea. He realized the best way of reintroducing them to their birth heritage is to organize travel back to Korea — to show their roots and give them an idea and an understanding of Korean life. In 1975, he organized the first “Motherland Tour” to Korea for a group of 18 adoptees, most of whom were biracial and part of the post-Korean War adoption wave.

Q: What was the impact of that first tour?

A: It was transformative. The adoptees really learned much more about Korea than anyone could ever provide them just by showing them pictures or reading out of books. … Back then, if you wanted to look something up about a country, you went and read an encyclopedia. There was no Internet, there was no Wikipedia. Even television was limited.

A lot of them also really had questions about identity. How do I fit in? And so the trip was a journey of exploration and discovery, but also one of self-understanding and growth and acceptance.

Q: How did the program evolve over time?

A: After the success of the first tour, Holt continued organizing annual heritage tours of Korea. In the 1980s, we began a second tour — the “family tour” — in addition to a tour for individual adoptees traveling by themselves. This was a tour that was designed to accommodate adoptive families whose children were not old enough to come on their own, but also for families that wanted to take this journey of exploration and discovery together.

Q: Did you ever join one of the heritage tours your father led?

A: Yes, I was part of the very first tour in 1975. I also joined subsequent tours during my teens and twenties.

Q: What are some of your memories from those early experiences?

A: Korea was vastly different back then. Today, it’s modern and technologically advanced, but in 1975, it was still deeply affected by poverty. I had an experience where we were out doing some shopping and a little boy, probably about 10-11 years old — about my same age — just appeared in front of me. His clothes were in tatters. He had no shoes. His face was all smudged with dirt. He just stood there standing in front of me with his hand out with palm up, asking for money, but he never said anything, just looked at me. … I think back on that and his face is still just burned into my memory. What I feel now is a deep sense of shame for not having done anything to help him.

The reason I I talk about this is that people need to understand Korea in 1975. This is a generation where a lot of adoptees were placed in the United States. Korea was so different then. There was so much poverty.

Q: You’ve made it your life’s mission to help orphaned and vulnerable children as Holt’s director of Korea and Mongolia programs. Did early experiences like that influence your decision to go into child welfare work?

A: It certainly is something that deeply affected me. However, growing up I never envisioned working for Holt or in child welfare. But it is funny how sometimes the universe has other plans for you.

Q: After your father retired from leading heritage tours, you took up the mantle. How many heritage tours of Korea have you led?

A: I’ve led every tour since 2000. That adds up to over 30 tours so far.

Q: How has the tour changed over the years — either intentionally or organically?

A: One of the biggest changes is the kind of information adoptees have access to. As Korean laws and recordkeeping have improved, more detailed histories have become available. Today, adoptees often have access to birth family information, hospital records and even the opportunity to meet birth relatives. This summer alone, several adoptees on the tour were able to connect with their birth families. And so the tour has really evolved from one of a tourist experience; it has moved away from being so focused on just learning about Korea to where it’s now more about learning about yourself.

Q: Has the structure of the tour changed as well?

A: Yes, we eventually decided to discontinue the “motherland tour,” and our tour is now more of a unified experience. It’s not just an adoptee-only tour and it’s not just a family-only tour. We have found that this mix of life stories, of ages, of experiences really enriches that journey for everyone.

Q: After 25 years of leading Korea Heritage Tours, what are some of your favorite memories?

A: One that I’ll never forget involved a young adoptee celebrating her 16th birthday during the tour. She had enough background information to visit her birth hospital. When she arrived, the staff asked if she’d like to meet the doctor who delivered her — and he was still working there, along with the two nurses who assisted.

They even took her to the delivery room, and she sat on the very bed where her mother had given birth to her. What made it even more incredible was that it happened on her actual birthday — 16 years to the day — and within an hour of her birth time. it was just amazing. It was the most serendipitous experience.

Q: Was she able to meet her birth mother?

A: No, she wasn’t. But even without that, the experience was transformative for her. It gave her a powerful connection to her beginnings.

Q: Are you present for birth family or foster family meetings during the tours?

A: Yes, I’ve actually translated and facilitated quite a number of meetings. It’s incredibly powerful. One of the things that I’m tasked to do during that process is to act as a bridge. I grew up in the U.S. but in a Korean-American family and I was born in Korea, so I have insights into both cultural perspectives. I help navigate the differences in expectations, emotions and communication between adoptees, birth families and adoptive families.

Q: What do adoptees gain by traveling on Holt’s Korea Heritage Tour instead of going on their own?

A: That’s a question we get a lot — and it’s one that’s been answered best by the adoptees who’ve taken our tour. Traveling overseas, especially to a country where you don’t speak the language and may be visiting for the first time, can be exhausting. You’re constantly navigating logistics: where to eat, how to get around, what to do if something goes wrong. On Holt’s tour, all of that is taken care of so adoptees can focus entirely on the experience.

On Holt’s heritage tour, you’re also traveling with people who understand the adoption story. Adoptees often face questions in daily life — about their families, their identity, their background. On this tour, there’s no need to explain yourself. It’s a safe space. And that is something that I cannot overstate. You’re surrounded by people who get it. That sense of belonging is incredibly powerful, especially during such a vulnerable and transformative journey.

Q: What kind of support does Holt provide during the tour?

A: Our staff and guides are with you every step of the way. If something comes up —whether it’s a logistical issue, a health concern, or an emotional moment — you have people you can count on. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and we know how to help adoptees get the most out of their time in Korea.

Q: Can’t adoptees just do a file review on their own?

A: They can, but the difference is in the ongoing support. If questions come up days later —about something in the file, or about processing the experience — who will be there to help? With Holt, our post-adoption services team is available before, during and after the tour. Whether it’s help packing, navigating medical needs or emotional support, we’re here for the entire journey.

Q: What’s the best age for an adoptee to join a heritage tour?

A: That’s one of the most frequently asked questions from adoptive families — and our answer is always: your child will tell you. We’ve had adoptees join the tour as young as 8 and as old as 70. Some are ready early, others much later. Even siblings adopted into the same family can feel differently — one may be eager to go, while the other has no interest.

Q: Should parents encourage their child to go, even if they’re unsure?

A: We always advise parents not to force it. Listen to your child. They’ll give you clues about whether it’s the right time. And it’s not uncommon for adoptees to return to Korea multiple times — once with their parents, and later with a partner or their own children.

Q: What else would you like to share about Holt’s heritage tours?

A: It is founded on the idea that when you place a child from a country overseas, you don’t erase that child’s background. It really is a disservice to the adoptees and their understanding of who they are. Since that time, many other organizations have begun their own tour opportunities, but it all sprang from that very first tour that Holt began in 1975, born out of the idea that we do have a commitment to the children we’ve placed through adoption. This is a lifelong relationship that we have with adoptees and adoptive families.

Travel with Holt on a Heritage Tour!

For adoptees ages 9 and older, Holt offers guided tours of China, Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam. Experience the culture and customs of your birth country and visit sites significant to your adoption story.

Learn About heritage Tours

The post Fifty Years of Holt’s Korea Heritage Tour appeared first on Holt International.

Holt Adoptee Camps

A week adoptees will always remember! Make new friends, try new things and discuss issues unique to adoptees. Holt’s overnight camps are open to adoptees ages 9-17.

Learn more about summer camps

The post What I Love About Holt Camp appeared first on Holt International.

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

Help a Mom in Cambodia Build a Brighter Future

With programs at risk, your gift of chickens, a garden or a sewing machine could be the only opportunity a mom has to lift her family out of poverty.

help a family thrive

The post Why I Believe in Holt appeared first on Holt International.

Seven-year-old Natalie is a joyful and affectionate child who loves music. She has short-cropped hair and holds a warm, thoughtful expression as she sits beside her mother, Grace, whose radiant smile is full of laughter. Grace isn’t Natalie’s birth mother, but she has cared for Natalie since she was a baby.

“Natalie had been abandoned at birth and was a very sick baby,” Home Free, our partner in Uganda, shares. “When a government social worker reached out to Grace about a baby in need of a family, she began making regular visits, slowly forming a quiet but powerful bond. When Natalie turned three months old, Grace brought her home — not just as a foster child, but as the daughter she had longed to love.”

Last year, with the support of Holt’s team in Uganda and our partner Home Free, Grace completed the steps to formally adopt her.  

Home Free’s mission — like Holt’s — is to help children who are orphaned, abandoned or confined to facilities to grow up in safe and loving families. The Uganda-based organization works to reunite children with relatives, support families in crisis, and provide foster care and adoption to children in need.

Like Holt, Home Free strives to help children reunite with their birth families before ever considering adoption. But the reality is clear: not every child can rejoin their birth family. And for those children who can’t stay with their birth family, joining an adoptive family is a far better outcome than growing up in an institution. 

“Many orphanages in Uganda are not well resourced and there is little regulation,” explains Malia Robello, Holt’s senior program manager for Uganda. “Children often remain in the orphanages and suffer from poor nutrition, limited access to healthcare, social isolation and few educational opportunities.”

Tragically, children living in orphanages also sometimes suffer abuse at the hands of the people entrusted to care for them.

When Home Free first met Grace in 2017, she was fostering both Natalie and a one-year-old boy from the same orphanage. “Her foster son had experienced severe abuse and neglect in the facility and nearly lost his life as a result,” Home Free shares.

Although Grace struggled at first with his trauma-caused behaviors, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to nurturing him back to health. And with support from Home Free’s social work team to understand his trauma, their relationship grew stronger — and he began to heal.

Reflecting on her children’s experiences in orphanages, Grace shares that no child should endure abuse, neglect or hunger in a place meant to protect them. Every child deserves the chance to grow up in a safe, loving family.

“Adoption saves lives,” she says with conviction.

Partnering for Children in Uganda

Holt’s team in Uganda began partnering with Home Free to help complete domestic adoptions in 2024.

“Domestic adoption requires administrative and legal steps that can be hard for families to navigate on their own,” Malia shares. “Potential adoptive parents must coordinate with social workers, government entities, attorneys, courts and other service providers, and the process is not always clear. The expense of legal and court fees is also a barrier for most families wishing to adopt. This is where Holt comes in.”

While Home Free had developed incredibly successful foster and kinship care programs, Holt has long supported and advocated for domestic adoption in countries around the world — and could offer a unique expertise in navigating complex in-country adoption processes. 

Holt’s team in Uganda trained Home Free social workers on the adoption requirements and case file preparation. With this training — as well as additional financial support from Holt sponsors and donors — Holt’s team supported Home Free to complete the administrative steps for adoption applications, including adoptive parent assessments, background checks, family tracing to ensure children could not remain with their birth families, child medical checks-ups, and help convening district alternative care panels to approve adoption placements.

With donor support, Holt also covers the court/legal fees required for formal adoptions.

“Basic legal fees, investigation reports and court processes alone cost up to $1,500 per child, and this does not include the cost of assessment reports, background checks and other services that are required,” Malia says. “For a typical family in Uganda, these expenses are a huge barrier, which is one reason domestic adoption has not progressed in the country.”

The cost of adoption was also a barrier for Grace, who thought she had already adopted Natalie then was surprised to learn from Home Free that formal procedures were still needed.

“With the support of Holt donors, Grace was able to go through the administrative and legal process to become Natalie’s adoptive mother,” Malia says.

“I couldn’t have managed it alone—in terms of money, or even knowing what to do, when and how,” Grace says.

One important step was a medical examination arranged as part of the process, which revealed that Natalie had a heart defect.

“Thanks to that support, [Natalie] got the treatment she needed,” she says.

Changing Perceptions of Adoption

Today, Natalie and Grace share an unbreakable bond.

“She’s my prayer warrior,” Grace says. “Whenever she prays for something, it happens. She’s made me feel like a special mom.”

Still, the journey hasn’t always been easy.

“Some community members misunderstood Grace’s decision to adopt, and certain relatives felt she should focus on helping her nieces and nephews instead,” our partner shares.  

While progress has been made, adoption is not yet widely embraced in Uganda.

“Informal kinship care or taking in a child temporarily is more common, but the lack of a formal/legal structure for this type of care creates issues with child protection and wellbeing,” Malia explains.

Motivations to adopt are also not well understood.

“A lot of people wonder why a foster/adoptive family would not instead use their financial resources toward their own children, or care for family members in need,” Malia continues. “Many don’t know the conditions of orphanages or the impact of institutional care on a child, assuming the child has all their needs met at the orphanage. So we raise awareness of the positive, life-changing benefits of foster care and adoption.”

Through our the partnership with Home Free, Holt’s team in Uganda began holding information sessions for prospective adoptive parents — offering them a deeper understanding of adoption and the process involved. During these sessions, Holt and Home Free also address concerns that are challenging for prospective families to overcome without many positive examples of adoption in their community.

“It helps to have a community dialogue so people can hear about the motivations of families who wish to adopt and the benefits of providing children with a permanent, loving home,” Malia says.

While Grace has also had to overcome misunderstanding within her community, our partner shares that her close family — especially her mother and sisters — have embraced Natalie with love and pride.

They understand Grace’s motivation to adopt, which could not be more pure.

Growing up with a disability and facing rejection from her parents, Grace was raised by her grandmother, who helped her access the services she needed. Through this care and encouragement, Grace eventually learned to walk. As a foster and later an adoptive mom, Grace felt she could offer this same care and encouragement to orphaned and vulnerable children.

“I felt I had to love and support children that were rejected and neglected,” she says.

Grace’s courage has even inspired several friends to consider adoption themselves, and she encourages others to approach adoption with the right heart. “Wear the shoes of a true parent,” she says. “Don’t adopt to fill your own need — do it to give a child love and support.”

Next Steps to Get Children Out of Orphanages, Into Families

In December 2024, five children — including Natalie — were officially adopted through this program, and 15 more children are currently moving through the adoption process in Uganda. Without the joint collaboration of Holt and Home Free, these children would likely never be legally adopted.

To further our mission in Uganda, Holt is now beginning to work with orphanages in a district where sponsors and donors support children — to begin foster care and, eventually, domestic adoption services.  

“This is separate from the Home Free project, which takes place in a district in which Holt does not have a presence,” Malia says. “However, the goal is the same – to get children out of institutional care and into family-based care.”

*This story was written in partnership with Home Free.

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The post The Story of Grace and Natalie: Domestic Adoption in Uganda appeared first on Holt International.

Nantale was embarrassed.

It was her first day of school, but she didn’t look like the other kids in her preschool class. They all wore crisp, clean uniforms. She wore her regular clothes, which were torn and ragged and stained from the red dirt roads of the village where she lives in rural Uganda.  

Nantale shied away from playing with the other kids. She was quiet and kept to herself.

Although she proved to be a good student, she started missing class. Her parents couldn’t afford to pay her school fees. Nantale knew she might have to drop out at any time.

That’s when she and her family learned about a special program that would help her stay in school. She learned that kind people from across the world would help pay for her school fees, supplies and uniforms — expecting nothing in return.

“She remembers clearly when the news was announced that Holt was recruiting children for education sponsorship,” shares Tinka Murungi, Holt Uganda’s sponsorship coordinator. “She could not wait to be recruited.”

When 7-year-old Nantale became a Holt sponsored child, her life began to change — at first in small, tangible ways. Through the support of her sponsor, she received a new, pressed uniform to wear to school. She received school supplies — unused pens and pencils and gleaming white notebook paper just waiting to be filled with drawings and math equations and first written words.

She used to shiver through cold nights on her family’s small farm, arriving at school tired in the morning. From her sponsor’s monthly donations, her social worker purchased a soft blanket to keep her warm at night.

A blanket. A pencil. A uniform. These small gestures were anything but small to Nantale. They lifted her self-esteem and helped her focus on her studies.

But in addition to these material gifts, Nantale’s sponsor gave her a gift that would change her entire outlook on her future — a school scholarship to cover her required school fees and assure her education. With this gift, Nantale felt something that she had never known before: a sense of stability.

Like many children living in her community — and in poverty around the world — Nantale didn’t know how long she would be able to stay in school. At any time, her dream of an education could be shattered.

Barriers to a Child’s Education in Rural Uganda

Nantale’s family lives in a small farming community where they work as subsistence farmers — living off what they can grow on their small plot of land. In Uganda, farming communities take up about 71 percent of the land and make up 84 percent of the population. Years of war have devastated an already inadequate infrastructure in these villages, leaving gaps of all kinds — gaps in healthcare, gaps in education, gaps in access to fair and safe lending to help families rebuild their businesses and their lives. For the children of these communities, an education is no guarantee and depends on mainly two variables — whether they have access to a school, and whether their parents can afford to pay the fees required for them to attend.

Fees to attend a primary school in Uganda range from about 150,000-215,000 shillings — or $40-$60 — per child per year. School supplies and uniforms often triple the cost of school overall — with an expense 300,000 shillings, or $86, per child per year. If children need to attend boarding school, which many do as schools are so inaccessible, the cost is about 3-4 times as much. But in a community where a family may earn at best 10-20,000 shillings per month, this cost is too steep to afford on their own — particularly when a family has more than one child, which most families in Uganda do.

I thank you my sponsor for loving and supporting me. Because of you, my sponsor, I receive everything I need for my school. My mother is also happy for your support. We pray for you always.” — Nantale

Nantale is the fifth of six siblings. But unlike many children in her surrounding community, she lives with both her parents. Many children in Uganda have lost one or both parents to conflict due to armed fighting among ethnic groups or the HIV epidemic — leaving elderly grandparents or an older sibling to care for them.

Another reason children lose their parents is a lack of affordable medical care for families living in rural poverty. Accidents, especially road accidents, are common. Even if they survive, the consequences can be catastrophic.

When Nantale was 8 years old — less than a year into Nantale’s sponsorship journey — both her parents were in a devastating accident that left them both with fractured legs. In a more developed country — with a broader social safety net and greater access to advanced medical care — they would likely have recovered from their injuries. Instead, they both ended up permanently disabled.   

“They were likely treated at a Holt-supported health center in the community,” explains Malia Robello, Holt’s senior program manager for Uganda. “It’s also very likely they didn’t heal properly — even if they did have surgery —because they both needed to work and care for the home soon after the accident.”

Although Holt does on occasion provide medical care for parents of children in our child sponsorship program, funds are limited and primarily reserved for life-threatening cases.

“And typically,” Malia says, “for the children.”

Today, Nantale’s father walks with a walking stick and is not able to work the way he did before the accident. Her mother now supports herself to walk — but she can’t walk long distances.  Where before they struggled to support their children, now they faced even greater obstacles.

“Their disabilities created a significant barrier to earning an income,” explains Tinka.

Thankfully, when a child enrolls in Holt’s child sponsorship program, their whole family is empowered with resources and support to help them become stable and self-reliant.

In the rural villages of Uganda, Holt leads savings groups that teach parents, particularly mothers, how to earn money and save together. Through financial literacy training, these women are learning as a community how to make and sell goods, grow crops, buy and raise livestock, and become businesswomen in the hopes of better supporting their families.

When Nantale was enrolled in Holt’s child sponsorship program, a Holt social worker visited the family and identified ways to help them overcome the challenges they faced. Her mother soon joined a Holt savings group and received training in how to run and manage a small business. With start-up funds from Holt donors, she soon started a business that she could manage despite her disability.

“I learned how to make pancakes, which I sell in the market to get money to support our children,” her mother shared with Tinka. “I also save in the savings group. I am so happy because of Holt.”

Through Holt Uganda’s family strengthening program, Nantale’s mother also learned ways to improve her children’s health and nutrition, and gained parenting skills that strengthened her bond with her children.

“I am now a better parent. I used to be tough on my children, but now we share together,” she said. “They no longer fear me.”

Child Sponsorship Creates Generational Change

Through Holt’s child sponsorship model, families like Nantale’s are empowered to earn the income they need to support their children. But the primary way sponsors empower families and communities to overcome poverty is to educate future generations — starting, first and foremost, with their sponsored child.

Today, Nantale is 12 years old. She is in her fifth year of Holt child sponsorship. And she is at the top of her class.

“She is always the best in her class,” Tinka shares. “She enjoys school life and wants to become a lawyer after her studies. She says that she wants to be a lawyer to provide justice for poor people in the community.”

When Tinka asked Nantale’s mom what she would like to say to her sponsors, she broke down in tears.

“To Nantale’s sponsor, I want to say thank you so much for choosing my daughter,” she said. “You came in at a time when I had lost hope. We were not sure about keeping her in school. You brought joy to Nantale and our entire family. Because of you, our family is lively and hopeful. Nantale is now assured of her education. She is more confident, now socializes with other children, and tells me she works hard at school to make her sponsor happy. She is always the best in class. You have opened a brighter future for Nantale and our family. I only pray that our good Lord blesses you.”

Nantale also wanted to express her gratitude to her sponsor.

“I thank you my sponsor for loving and supporting me,” she said. “Because of you, my sponsor, I receive everything I need for my school. My mother is also happy for your support. We pray for you always.”

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The post God Bless You, My Lovely Friend: A Uganda Child Sponsorship Story appeared first on Holt International.

You’re amazing! Through your heartfelt giving in 2024, you helped make a tremendous difference in the lives of over one million children, families and individuals around the world. Whether you provided regular support as a monthly child sponsor, gave on Giving Tuesday to help a girl go to school and stay safe from child trafficking and early marriage, helped a child with special needs receive the care they need to thrive through the Molly Holt Fund or helped meet one of our president’s year-end priorities for children in greatest need, you brought hope and opportunity to the lives of many of the world’s most vulnerable children and families. Keep reading to learn about some of the specific ways that your gifts to Holt made a difference in 2024!

While much of Holt’s work is community-based, your gifts also provided direct care and services to over 431,000 children this past year. Designed to provide the exact help a child needs at the time they need it, this kind of direct care includes everything from emergency food and safe shelter for a family in crisis to surgery or needed medical treatment for a child with special healthcare needs to foster care and social work support to help a child reunite with their family or join a family through adoption.

In 2024, you helped 181 children join permanent, loving families through adoption — 110 of them through international adoption, and 71 through domestic, in-country adoption to families living in the child’s country of birth. Overall, 95% of children adopted internationally were older than age 5, part of a sibling group or had at least some minor special needs. This past year, 65% of children placed internationally had moderate or major physical, cognitive or developmental disabilities. And while the number of children with complex special needs joining adoptive families internationally has increased, so has the number of older children. This past year, 64% of children were older than 5 at the time they joined their families — and 29% were between the ages of 10-18! This shift is a truly wonderful development for children who in prior years would watch as younger, healthier children left the orphanage to join families, while they stayed behind with little hope of ever being adopted. Your support of advocacy programs for older children like Holt’s Thailand and Philippines special needs programs — and the Colombia hosting program — has helped make this shift possible.

Today, the overall cost of international adoption exceeds the actual fees and expenses required to complete the process. This is one key reason why so many agencies have closed their doors in recent years. It’s only through the generous support of donors like you that Holt is able to continue this vitally important practice for children who cannot remain or reunite with their birth families, or join domestic adoptive families in their country of birth Thank you for supporting this vitally important path to a family for children who would otherwise grow up in, and age out of, orphanages overseas.

Visit our waiting child photolisting to learn about the more than 200 children waiting for families who are older or have complex special needs — and how you can begin the process to adopt, or support their journey to a family!

For children growing up in orphanages around the world, Holt stands by our belief that joining a family through adoption is the last, best option for them. For these children, an adoptive family provides the attentive, nurturing care that they need to achieve critical developmental milestones and to reach their potential in life. Countless studies have shown the detrimental emotional and developmental effects that long-term institutionalization has on children, and this is compounded for children who already have special medical or developmental needs — as is the case for many of the children growing up in orphanages overseas. This is why we stand by our commitment to continue international adoption for children in an ever-changing and increasingly challenging landscape.

But we also firmly believe that every child should have the chance to grow up in their birth family, and birth culture, whenever possible. Before we ever pursue adoption for a child, we first strive to help them grow up in the loving care of their birth family.  For children living in orphanages, this often means a long social work process to identify their immediate or extended family and explore the possibility of reunification. And in 2024, with donor support, Holt teams around the world helped reunite 302 children with their birth families — a significant number when you consider the time and resource-intensive work that goes into identifying relatives and ensuring children can thrive in their care.

But everywhere we work, our first goal is always to prevent family separation in the first place. And with the generous support of sponsors and donors, 29,023 children who were at risk of separation were able to remain in the loving care of their families in 2024. With support tailored to each individual child and family, you helped provide everything from clothing, warm bedding, safe housing and school supplies to livestock for nourishing food and income. In 2024, 4,405 individuals also participated in Holt-supported economic empowerment programs, including job skills training, education in how to grow gardens or tend livestock, financial literacy training, village savings and loan groups and other innovative programs that empower families to generate a stable income and independently support their children.

With generous donor support, 4,817 adoptees and families received support from Holt’s post-adoption services team in 2024 — 1,264 more than in 2023. While this shows greater success in outreach to those needing support, it also underscores the tremendous need for post-adoption services among those touched by adoption. In 2024, we saw an increased need for assistance with citizenship and documentation, in addition to other services such as birth search support, counseling referrals and post-adoption parent education through our PACE program. Over the summer, over 180 campers attended Holt Adoptee Camp in Oregon, Wisconsin and New Jersey — a unique program designed to build adoptee community and help adoptee youth explore their identity alongside campers and counselors who share the unique experience of growing up adopted. After a five-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we resumed our counselor-in-training program to help recruit more Holt Adoptee Camp counselors. Our post-adoption team also held an adoptee networking event designed to introduce adoptees to each other and local adoptee organizations that hold events, community support groups and education. With more than 50 attendees, this event also gave adoptees the opportunity to access and review their original adoption file with a member of Holt’s post-adoption team — rather than sending them a digital copy. Returning original documents is a great step for adoptees to reclaim and honor their identity and history.

In many countries around the world, an education is not a right. It is a privilege. Children living in poverty do not have access to a free public education system and equal opportunity to achieve their goals. The cost of fees, uniforms and supplies required for school mean that parents may have to choose between feeding their child — or giving them the opportunity to learn and one day, escape the cycle of poverty. Often, children drop out of school to work and help earn income for their family. In some cases, girls as young as 12 or 13 are married off and when they do, their formal education ends. But for over 22,500 children and young adults this past year, you helped them stay on the path to completing their education, leaving a life of poverty, and following their dreams.

Whether you provided monthly support for school fees and supplies as a child sponsor, gave a scholarship through Gifts of Hope or supported our Giving Tuesday campaign to help girls go to school, you helped provide the support and resources needed for 21,356 children to receive an education in 2024! Additionally, donors like you helped 1,211 young adults growing up in poverty or in orphanages to pursue higher education — including through our ILEA program for children aging out of orphanage care in the Philippines. By empowering children through education, you also help protect them from trafficking, abuse, child labor and other dangers that increase exponentially when children are out of school. Thank you for keeping children safe and making their dreams possible in 2024!

In the impoverished communities where you support children, food security continues to be a major concern. Children arrive at school hungry and tired, without lunch, and go home unsure if their family will eat a full meal before bed. But because of you, over 195,000 children received the nourishing food they need to thrive in 2024.

Whether you gave emergency food to a family in crisis, supported a preschool program that provides free lunch or provided a cow, goat or garden for a family to produce their own food, your gifts provided the essential nutrition that children and families need to grow strong and healthy and work toward a better life. In total, Holt sponsors and donors provided a staggering 2,361,064 meals to hungry children and families in 2024.

In 2024, Holt also celebrated 10 years of our Child Nutrition Program, a multifaceted effort that seeks to strengthen nutrition and feeding practices for vulnerable children living in orphanages, foster homes and impoverished communities across the globe. What started as a pilot program in two locations in India has since expanded to eight countries, serving more than 55,000 children over the past decade.

Holt’s specialized care and support for children with disabilities is one way that our programs are unique from other organizations around the world. Many of the children you support through Holt programs have special healthcare needs or disabilities. In 2024, you helped 2,280 children with disabilities to live fuller, happier lives. In Vietnam, you provided special education and an outreach program in a community where children with disabilities would otherwise stay home all day. In Mongolia, you helped support a program that helps children with disabilities living in impoverished communities to access the specialized resources they need. Through Gifts of Hope, you helped provide adaptive equipment like wheelchairs and hearing aids. And through Holt’s pioneering Child Nutrition Program, you provided the resources to train 15,554 caregivers and parents in how to properly feed children with disabilities so that they are able to receive the full nutrition they need to thrive. 

Through your kind and generous donations in 2024, 3,692 children living in orphanages, group homes, kinship or foster families received the essential food, clothing and medical care they needed, in addition to safe places to live and nurturing care from devoted caregivers.

Holt’s kinship and foster care programs provide more nurturing, family-like care for children who would otherwise live in institutions. Through kinship care, sponsors and donors provide the support children need to live with a family member —  if not a birth parent, then possibly an aunt, uncle or grandparent who can provide loving, attentive care. In many cases, children living in foster care are waiting to rejoin their birth families or join a family through domestic or international adoption. These highly trained and loving foster families provide the one-on-one care, attention, and social and physical development children need to reach critical developmental milestones — and thrive once they join a permanent family.

Whether you helped provide routine health screenings through Holt’s Child Health Days in rural Uganda or a life-changing surgery for a child with a special medical need, your generous donations helped provide vital healthcare for 131,914 children in 2024. As children need caregivers who are healthy and equipped to give them attentive, engaged care, your donations also helped provide medical care for 111,215 parents and family members.

Around the world, children are often sick when they first enter orphanage care. Sometimes this has to do with underlying medical conditions or special needs. Sometimes it has to do with the impoverished conditions they lived in before coming into care. Sometimes it’s because they routinely experienced hunger. Often, it’s a combination of all three. This was true for one 2-year-old girl living in an orphanage in India who donors helped this past year. But thanks to Holt sponsors and donors like you, she received the medical care, nutritious food and therapies she needed to become healthy again.

In 2024, you and your fellow donors gave 5,456 Gifts of Hope to children and families in need around the world. You gave food for hungry children, shoes to keep children’s feet warm, dry and protected on their long walk to school, an egg a day to provide vital protein to growing kids, and livestock likes goats, chickens and cows to nourish families and provide vital income when they sell the offspring. You provided school scholarships for children who might not otherwise go to school, as well as the books and supplies they needed to succeed. You gave the gift of nurturing foster care to children waiting for a permanent, loving family, and urgently needed orphanage supplies like diapers, cribs and blankets. You empowered single mothers to earn income for their family through the gift of job skills training or a small business microgrant. You gave Christmas and birthday gifts to children whose families or caregivers can’t afford to provide gifts on these holidays. And you gave to Holt’s Where Most Needed fund to make it possible for our staff and partners in the field to meet immediate, vital needs of children and families that might otherwise go unmet.

Thank you for your heartfelt gifts to children and families in need in 2024. We can’t wait to partner with you again in 2025!

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The post See the Difference You Made in 2024 appeared first on Holt International.

Below, Jordan Love, a Korean adoptee and Holt staff member, shares about the party at the Ilsan Center for individuals with disabilities. The Korea Gift Team sang Christmas carols and delivered presents hand-selected for each resident based on what they specifically requested.

Concerned about children who wouldn’t be adopted, especially children with profound medical and developmental conditions, Harry and Bertha Holt personally funded and built the Ilsan Center in 1962. As Jordan notes, some of the residents have lived here for over 60 years. Others, like Jordan, stayed at Ilsan for a short time as children before they joined adoptive families. Some residents have even been able to leave the care home and lead mostly independent lives after receiving specialized therapies, vocational and skill-based trainings, and other support at Ilsan. Today, the Ilsan Center is a state-of-the-art facility that is world renowned for its care and support for individuals with disabilities.

As Jordan shares, “I feel so much gratitude and appreciation to be able to return to Holt Ilsan Center, somewhere that was vital to my life story. To be able to celebrate Christmas with the residents here (some of whom were here when I lived here) is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. I am blessed to be in a position to be able to advocate and show donors how transformative their caring hearts and generosity has on those in Holt care.”

The 2024 Korea Gift Team Christmas Party at Ilsan

While traveling in Korea, the gift team members also had the chance to visit the Goyang Community Center, a facility Holt donors support to empower and enrich the lives of individuals with disabilities through art and music. Below, Dan Smith, Holt’s president and CEO, shares about this amazing facility.

Visiting the Goyang Community Center in Korea

This year, the Korea Gift Team also had the chance to spend some time with the women and children living at the Morning Garden shelter.

One of six Holt donor-supported shelters for single mothers in Korea, Morning Garden provides everything from housing, food and healthcare to parenting courses, childcare and vocational training. The women receive counseling to help them cope with the stigma and discrimination that single mothers and their children face in Korean society. And they may stay at Morning Garden for as long as they need to become empowered and confident in their ability to independently raise their child.

Catch a glimpse of the Korea Gift Team’s Christmas celebration at Morning Garden below!

A Special Visit With the Women and Children at Morning Garden

Couldn’t join this year’s Korea Gift Team trip, but still want to help children and individuals with disabilities? Give a gift to the Molly Holt Fund!

Learn more about Holt’s work in Korea!

See how sponsors and donors create a brighter, more hopeful future for children and families in Korea!

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The post See Video From Korea Gift Team 2024 appeared first on Holt International.

Recently, Beth Smith, Holt’s China adoption director, retired after more than 25 years as part of Holt’s China program. Before she left, she reached out to China adoptive families asking them to give a gift to help children left behind in orphanages due to China’s recent decision to end international adoption. The response included both generous gifts for children and heartfelt messages from families who Beth supported on their China adoption journey.

Read one letter from adoptive mom Emily Hess who adopted two children from China with Beth’s help and support.

Hello Beth, 

I just received your letter in the mail regarding your retirement from Holt. I wanted to reach out to thank you for your many years of commitment to the children of China, especially mine. 

I will never forget hearing your voice the day before Thanksgiving in 2016 with information on our match, Ruth. She is an incredible daughter, a beautiful soul, a sweet sister, a best friend, a diligent worker and so much more. She has had five cleft-related surgeries and in Jan 2024 started monthly blood transfusions for her Thalassemia. Although her medical needs have been much more than we originally expected, I would move heaven and earth for her. 

And for Heidi. Your help and guidance in obtaining medical records, your support as we made a very different decision for a child we felt led to adopt although her needs were not on our checklist will never be forgotten. While we never planned to adopt a child who would need lifelong care, I cannot imagine our lives without her. The fragile state we found her in while in China is haunting. Especially as they closed just three months after we came home with her. I’m gutted for the many, many children like her who will now never receive the love of a family.  

So thank you, again, for all you’ve done over the years for the children of China. Our family is better for the work you’ve done. Our lives are richer for it. 

Praying your retirement will be well enjoyed, especially after these four years of battling for the children. 

All the best to you,

Emily Hess

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The post Our Lives Are Richer Because of You appeared first on Holt International.

Tieu lightly rests her left hand on her right arm. Her skin is painful to look at. Marbled and pocked, shiny and red and raised about an inch above her healthy skin, a severe burn runs the length of her arm, serving as a daily reminder of the gasoline fire that nearly took her life. Tieu is 40 but looks much younger, with shiny black hair parted down the side. She has five daughters — the youngest of which sits beside her now, giggling and bouncing with excitement to have visitors in her home. Another of Tieu’s daughters sits on the other side of her giggly sister, watching her mom with worry as she talks about her burn.

“This daughter,” Tieu says, looking solemnly at her older daughter, “wants to become a doctor so she can treat my hand.”

Up until the accident a year and a half ago, Tieu had a fairly well-paying job working in a factory that produced wooden furniture. She and her husband both worked, and together, they earned just enough to provide for their five girls — including paying the $75 to $200 per child to cover their school fees, supplies, books and uniforms. But when gasoline spilled and caught fire in the factory where she worked, Tieu barely escaped. She sustained severe burns over 40 percent of her body, all along her back and legs and right arm, causing her to lose partial mobility in her right hand. If she presses too hard on her skin, it hurts. If she moves her arm, it hurts. If she tries to extend her arm, she can’t.

Although she received $500 in compensation from her employer, her hospital bills added up to about $3,000. To pay the hospital, she and her husband had to borrow money from friends and family. In debt, and unable to work, Tieu worried not so much about herself, but about what this would mean for her daughters. She wanted more for them than a life of hard manual labor. She wanted them to have freedom from worry, and security when accidents inevitably happen.

“I worry most that my children won’t be able to go to school,” Tieu says. “Because of my burn and injury, what my husband earns is barely enough for us to survive.”

Like so many families in rural Vietnam, who have few job opportunities beyond working in factories or cultivating the small plot of land allotted to them by the government, Tieu and her husband have always just gotten by.

Their safety net is their family — and their community.

Holt’s vice president of South and Southeast Asia programs, Thoa Bui, grew up in Vietnam, and her father came from a community not far from where Tieu and her family live outside Hanoi.

“One thing that is really nice about rural living in Vietnam is, for example, if your house is really collapsing, and the government gives you some [support], and NGO gives you some, and you put some in, the neighbors will come and do labor and help put up the bricks and all these things,” she says. “They try to help.”

In many ways, the communal structure provides a support network that has more or less disintegrated in the city. Relatives often live close by and rely on each other for support. Children care for aging parents, and grandparents care for grandchildren — providing free childcare while their parents work during the day. Everyone knows everyone in the community and, at the cost of privacy, neighbors often know each other’s personal struggles and offer to help when needed.

“If you live in the same village, whatever is happening in your family, the village just knows because that’s the way of life here,” explains Thoa. But they are also very supportive of each other, she says, “because of their level of understanding of what other families are going through.”

On the morning we visit Tieu and her family, several neighbors stand outside her house, curious about the American film crew inside. They follow as we walk along the labyrinthine brick-walled passageways that envelope the commune like a medieval fortress. In another section of the commune, techno music blares so loud that no one can possibly focus on anything but the wedding celebration taking place at 10 a.m. on this overcast Monday morning; everyone in the community is invited, so no one complains.

As we try to talk over the music, Holt Vietnam’s long-time in-country director, Hang Dam, laughs. “Vietnam is a communal society,” she says. “This is just how it is.”

Hang is in her 40s, tall with high, freckled cheeks and dark, red-tinted hair. Like Thoa, she is a former Fulbright scholar, is friendly but assertive, and perfectly maintains relations with the 3-to-5 government caseworkers who accompany us on every family visit. Hang grew up in northern Vietnam in the years after the Vietnam War, and vividly recalls layering shirts in winter because her family couldn’t afford warm coats. At school, she says, she and her friends would compare how many layers each of them had on. The economy suffered so much during the war that the government rationed food. In this time of scarcity, social expectation dictated that if you had rice or meat, and your neighbor didn’t, you had to share.

But even in a communal society like Vietnam, family relies mostly on family, and neighborly compassion — and generosity – can only stretch so far.

With Tieu’s debt and worry mounting, she approached the local women and children’s committee in her commune, which gave her a small grant of about $140 — an amount that would help cover the cost of fees for one of her daughters to go to school. The government provides some assistance for families in crisis, but rarely is it enough to sustain an entire family, much less send all of their children to school.

“Any sort of social benefit in Vietnam is really small,” Thoa says. “It helps a little bit, but not much.”

Tieu, however, didn’t need a handout. She still had full use of her legs and back and left arm. She could work, but for the first time in her adult life, she found herself unemployable in the type of factory jobs and seasonal labor she once did.

“Because of my hand, no one will hire me,” she says, demonstrating how little mobility she has in her right arm and hand.

As winter set in, Tieu’s family went deeper in debt when her husband suffered a workplace injury of his own — breaking his right hand. All of a sudden, they had no income, and no way to provide for their girls.

They were about to give up hope.

But around the same time, on the other side of the world, Holt’s Christmas Gifts of Hope catalog started hitting mailboxes. At Holt, we began receiving gifts from generous donors for the children and families in our programs. Gifts like warm bedding and nourishing food for children in orphanages, vaccines and emergency medical care for families living in under-resourced communities, and gifts that empower struggling families with the tools and resources they need to earn a stable income. One of these income-generating gifts weighs 1,500 pounds. It moves and moos and produces nourishing milk and offspring that can be sold for profit — a perfect gift for a family like Tieu’s.

“A cow is a really big asset for poor people in rural Vietnam,” Thoa says. When the cow produces a calf, they can sell the calf, and then repeat the cycle — providing regular income, and money to save or reinvest in other income-generating resources. “They keep repeating the cycle, and that’s how we see the economy of the family improve so they can help their children,” Thoa says, adding that it doesn’t cost a lot to maintain a cow where Tieu lives. “It’s quite sustainable and supported in the community in the farming area of Vietnam.”

Cows are so expensive in Vietnam, however, that families can rarely save enough to purchase one on their own.

As the local government in Tieu’s commune often partners with Holt to meet the needs of families in crisis, they referred Tieu to the staff at Holt Vietnam — who quickly deemed Tieu and her family the perfect recipient for the gift of a cow. They had experience raising livestock, a barn to raise the cow, and the drive and work ethic needed to build a small business from selling surplus milk and offspring.

“When I have a calf, I will be able to sell it for 13-15 million doung,” Tieu says. About $600 to $700, this amount could be reinvested to purchase more livestock, which Tieu eventually hopes to do.

But right now, she only has one thing on her mind.

“What do you want to do with that money?” we ask her. “What do you want to buy?”

“I’m not thinking about buying anything,” she says. “I want to use that money to send my kids to school.”

As Tieu shares, her three older daughters are getting ready for school. It’s a cool day, and they put on the puffy striped jackets of their uniforms over heavy sweaters and leggings. Three of Tieu’s daughters are in primary school, and her youngest just started kindergarten this year. For Tieu and her husband, the cost of sending their girls to school exceeds any of their other expenses — which is puzzling, considering that primary school is technically “free” in Vietnam.

“The law says it’s free, but the school will apply all kinds of charges at the beginning of the year that parents have to pay,” Thoa explains. “So uniforms and school supplies, parents have to buy books and then all kinds of fees charged by the school. They call it ‘maintenance fee’ or ‘teacher’s fee,’ and ‘buildings fee,’ ‘construction fees,’ academic achievement kind of fees. Each school has a long list of fees at the beginning of the year.” Although it varies from school to school and region to region, the total amount to send one child to school falls roughly between $75 to $200 — a huge sum of money for an already-struggling family with multiple school-age children.

“If parents cannot afford to pay,” Thoa says, “their children cannot go to school.”

Many families go into debt just to put their children through primary and secondary school.

“Education is so highly valued in Vietnam — by the parents, by the society … and it’s very competitive too,” Thoa says. “I would say it’s a really difficult system to succeed. That’s why parents, that’s all they do. They can go hungry, but their children have to go to school.”

Thankfully, Tieu’s daughters have sponsors now, who stepped up to help support them after reading their family’s story. Every month, these sponsors help meet the children’s basic needs at home, as well as pay their school fees, buy their notebooks and pens and books, and provide new uniforms when they outgrow the ones they have.

Sponsors are helping Tieu’s daughters get through school, and she is so grateful for their support — support that now allows Tieu to focus her sights on an even loftier goal. She wants all of her daughters to go to a university in a big city, where they can study to become teachers or other professionals. Tieu has a high school diploma herself — enough education to get a job in a factory, but not to have the kind of life she dreams for her daughters.

“If they can go to school, they can have a career so they don’t have to work as hard as their parents,” Tieu says of her daughters who still live at home. Tieu’s oldest daughter has already graduated from high school. She got married earlier this year, and now works in a factory.

“That’s the dream,” Thoa says of Tieu’s determination to send her daughters to university. “Of course, if you ask any mother in Vietnam, that’s what they say, because the whole society is doing that for their children. Including if they have to sell the house, they do it.”

Although considerably less than in the U.S., at $500 to $1,000 per year, the price tag for a college education in Vietnam still exceeds what most rural families can afford. Admission is also fiercely competitive, with far more applicants than slots available — and a very limited number of scholarships awarded to only the most high-performing students.

“Whether she can do it or not with five kids,” Thoa says of Tieu’s goal, “it really depends on if the kids will be able to progress through 12^th grade.”

But as long as her daughters continue to excel in school, their sponsors will continue supporting them, including little Nam. For the next 12 years — as long as her family needs help paying her fees — Nam will have a sponsor supporting and cheering her on.

And one day, if Nam, or any of her sisters, gain admission to university, Holt donors will help them get there.

“We tell overseas staff, if you have kids who are high-performing who can perform at university level, but who are struggling with finances, just discuss with us on a case-by-case basis,” Thoa says. “Don’t hold them back.”

Tieu hopes to one day regain full use of her hand so she doesn’t have to rely on her husband and her children, who help with heavy lifting and farm work that she can no longer do on her own. She looks at her daughters sitting with her — her serious daughter who wants to become a doctor, and her youngest, Nam, who snuggles into her mom’s arm as she talks, giggling and squirming, oblivious to the family hardships that her older siblings have grown increasingly aware of.

Tieu may never regain full mobility, but she has security now. With her cow, she has a reliable source of income, and will soon have profit to start saving for college. And she has sponsors, who have come alongside Tieu in her mission to educate her daughters — and give them the life she never had. With these gifts of hope, Tieu is now connected to a global community of people whose compassion stretches over continents and seas, from big cities and small towns in the U.S., to a rural commune in northern Vietnam.

“I’d like to thank all the people,” Tieu says, “who supported me and my family.”

Her face warm and relaxed, Tieu pulls her youngest daughter tight, and giggles with her. Thankfully, she can still do that.

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This story was originally published in March 2018.

The post The Gift of Hope appeared first on Holt International.