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How You Helped These Four Children at Year End

At the end of 2020, Liya, Cam, Purev and Guneet represented the greatest needs children were facing after a difficult year. One month after Holt donors generously stepped up to help, see how these children are doing now!

In the last months of 2020, we shared about some of the greatest, most urgent needs children around the world were facing as part of our President’s Top Priority Campaign for Children 2020. After such a difficult year, from stay at home orders to lost income to schools closing, children were truly in crisis.

The top needs Holt staff around the world identified were: malnutrition in Ethiopia, overcrowded orphanages, children living and working in the garbage dump in Mongolia, and children and families who were homeless or on the brink of homelessness. Each need came to life through a child and his or her story. These children were Liya in Ethiopia, Cam in Vietnam, Purev in Mongolia and Guneet in India.

While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be long-lasting, Holt donors responded generously, providing help to these children who needed it the very most. It’s only been a month since the President’s Top Priority Campaign for Children 2020 concluded, but already children are starting to get the help they need.

Here are the latest updates we’ve received about Liya, Cam, Purev and Guneet since they began receiving help!

Continue reading “How You Helped These Four Children at Year End”

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2020 Year-End Top Priority: Children in Orphanages Due to COVID-19

Orphanages are overwhelmed with children due to COVID-19 — children like 13-year-old Cam in Vietnam. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Holt orphanage partners all around the world have reached out to Holt — sharing that more and more children were coming into their care. And the reason may surprise you. It’s not because of parents’ death or illness due to COVID-19, but because of poverty. The type of poverty that makes you unable to feed your children.

Thirteen-year-old Cam was placed in an orphanage a few months ago.

The type of poverty that forces you to make the heart-wrenching decision to place your child in an orphanage.

The type of poverty experienced by 13-year-old Cam and her family. Continue reading “2020 Year-End Top Priority: Children in Orphanages Due to COVID-19”

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5 Reasons We’re Thankful for Sponsors and Donors Like You

As we approach the national day of giving thanks, we’d like to share a few of the reasons we’re so thankful for Holt child sponsors and donors. It was hard to narrow it down to such a short list, but here are our top five:

Mary Luz thought she might have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave her children in someone else’s care. But then she discovered a Holt child sponsor and donor-supported program in her community.
Mary Luz thought she might have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave her children in someone else’s care. But then she discovered a Holt child sponsor and donor-supported program in her community.

1. You help children stay in the loving care of their families.

Poverty and hunger make people do desperate things, including placing their children in someone else’s care. But as a Holt child sponsor, you prevent children from needlessly growing up apart from their families. You help provide everything a child needs to thrive right where they are, from nourishing food to safe shelter to job skills training for their parents. Your monthly gifts mean that parents never have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave their child at the gates of an orphanage. And a child never has to experience the trauma of separating from their family. Continue reading “5 Reasons We’re Thankful for Sponsors and Donors Like You”

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The Only Home He Knew

When a tragic fire burns down an orphanage in Haiti, Holt donors immediately step up to provide nourishing food, safe shelter and psychological support for the 28 children who survive — including one boy who lost the only home he ever knew.

Samuel with a life skills trainer at the transit center where he has stayed since the fire at his orphanage in Haiti.
Samuel with a life skills trainer at the transit center where he has stayed since the fire at his orphanage in Haiti.

Ten-year-old Samuel can’t remember how old he was when his mom left him at an orphanage in Fermathe, a city just south of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. He was little, though — around 3 or 4 — and he remembers that his mom visited him for a while afterward. Until she didn’t. Continue reading “The Only Home He Knew”

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When Families Migrate: One Mom’s Story

When Ary migrated from Cambodia to Thailand in search of work, she wasn’t sure when she would see her children again. Then Holt sponsors and donors helped her come back home. 

The first time Ary and her husband traveled to Thailand in search of work, they brought their four children with them. Their youngest was still breastfeeding, and Ary couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her children behind. Migrating on foot, they eventually came to a fast-moving river. There was no bridge or ferry to take them across. They would have to swim.

“My children nearly drowned because the water was very strong,” she says. Continue reading “When Families Migrate: One Mom’s Story”

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How Migration Endangers Children: a Q&A, How You Can Help

Increasingly long periods of drought have made it difficult for families in rural areas to support their children without migrating for work.

What does migration have to do with Holt’s mission in Cambodia?

In every country where Holt works, Holt sponsors and donors help vulnerable children grow up with the love and stability of a family — either by helping them stay in the loving care of their birth family, or uniting them with a loving, permanent family through adoption. But in Cambodia, a country where more and more families migrate to big cities or neighboring countries in search of work, helping families stay together has become an even greater challenge. Continue reading “How Migration Endangers Children: a Q&A, How You Can Help”

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Thank You For Helping Me Come Home

One boy’s story of life in a Cambodian orphanage, and how Holt sponsors and donors helped him come back home to his family.

Kea stands in front of his grandma's home.

When Kea lived in the orphanage, he slept on the bottom bunk in a room full of bunkbeds occupied by teenage boys who left him out of things and made him feel alone.

“I was the smallest,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t have many friends.”

In the morning, if he slept too late, the orphanage cook would throw water on him to wake him up. He would help clean the pigpen, eat a breakfast mostly made of rice and go to school. After school, he had to come straight back to the orphanage. He did his homework by himself. He ate more rice. And went to bed.

“No one took care of me,” he says. Continue reading “Thank You For Helping Me Come Home”