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How COVID-19 is Affecting Sponsored Kids in Thailand: a Q&A

An interview with Kobgarn Trakulvaree, executive director of Holt Sahathai Foundation, Holt’s partner organization in Thailand.

The generous gifts from Holt sponsors and donors helped provide everything masks and sanitizer to storybooks and toys to keep children occupied during the pandemic.
The generous gifts from Holt sponsors and donors helped provide everything from masks and sanitizer to storybooks and toys to keep children occupied during the pandemic.

How is the pandemic affecting children and families in Holt’s Thailand programs?

Ten percent of the families we are helping are actually unemployed due to the pandemic. The rest have experienced pay reduction. Prior to the pandemic, the average monthly income of these families was 5,000 Thai baht per month, or around $167 U.S. dollars. Since the pandemic, most of the average income is reduced to only 3,000 baht a month — around $90 U.S. dollars. And the minimum, the lowest pay that we have found was only $17 dollars … So it’s not hard to imagine that these families are facing really hard situations. Continue reading “How COVID-19 is Affecting Sponsored Kids in Thailand: a Q&A”

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Fear, Fantasy, Reality and the Pursuit of Foster Care or Adoption

Today, I’m writing to all of you thinking of, or pursuing, foster parenting or adoption. You. The hopeful, the risk-takers. The ones dreaming of future sons and daughters, looking through waiting child websites or picturing futures with the one(s) who will eventually join your family.

Keep doing that.

It helps. I’ve been there, and imagining the possibilities is one of the best aspects of this crazy-making adoption process. These conversations are where you carve out all of the rich, sweet potential of adoption. Here is where you make sense of the preparation, the gut-wrenching process, with all of its false starts and inadequate answers. Here is where your motivation lives. Continue reading “Fear, Fantasy, Reality and the Pursuit of Foster Care or Adoption”

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My Son’s Second Mother

Adoptive mom Angela Crisanto shares a tribute to her son’s “second mother” — his foster mother — in gratitude for all the love she gave him while in her care in Korea.

Kai with his foster mother in Korea.
Kai with his foster mother in Korea.

For so many months, we had wondered about the family who was taking care of our son.

Before we adopted our older son, he had lived in an orphanage in Vietnam. We were so relieved that in Korea, there were more foster homes to take care of the children — including for our soon-to-be younger son, Kai. Continue reading “My Son’s Second Mother”

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Fostering Resilience During COVID-19

Greg Eubanks, Holt’s VP for U.S. foster care and adoption, shares how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting foster families and children this National Foster Care Awareness Month — and why we urgently need new families to say ‘yes’ to fostering. 

None of us imagined it would feel ‘normal’ to carry out our work in isolation, particularly when that work is so focused on human interaction and relationships. In Holt’s foster care program, we work every day with vulnerable children as our focus. These particular children live in our state, our county, and our neighborhood. Continue reading “Fostering Resilience During COVID-19”

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For Children in U.S. Foster Care, What Does Permanency Mean?

Holt Senior Vice President Greg Eubanks talks about the ongoing crisis in the U.S. foster care system and what can be done about it.

In the US, some 690,000 children live under the foster care system as of 2017. Around 269,000 of these kids entered the system for the first time that year. These kids can be as young as newborns and as old as 20. Approximately 124,000 of them are waiting to be adopted, while the remainder look forward to reunification with their biological parents. Continue reading “For Children in U.S. Foster Care, What Does Permanency Mean?”

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A Dispatch From The 2019 Korea Gift Team

While traveling on this year’s Korea Gift Team trip with Holt, adoptive mom and donor Seri Boettcher kept a travelogue to tell her friends and family about the programs she visited and the children, families and individuals she met. 

Holt staff member Amanda Baca holds a child in care during the 2019 Korea Gift Team trip.
Holt staff member Amanda Baca holds a child in care during the 2019 Korea Gift Team trip.

Holt Morning Garden Shelter

We travelled back to Seoul yesterday afternoon after a VERY moving morning in Daejeon (where we spent the night) at the Holt-sponsored Achimddeul Mother and Child Shelter. It seems with every Holt trip I’ve taken, there is one day that just hits me emotionally and I truly did not anticipate it would be this day on this trip. Continue reading “A Dispatch From The 2019 Korea Gift Team”

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Why U.S. Kids Need You To Say “Yes”

Children in our U.S. foster care and adoption system are in crisis — sleeping in hotel rooms and repurposed jails for a lack of somewhere to go. They need individuals and families to stand up, and say “yes.”  

In our Seattle area office each day, we receive multiple emails from the State of Washington that briefly describe children who need a place to go. For multiple reasons, some need a placement for only a few days, other need a long-term foster family, and others need an adoptive family. These emails overwhelm me with the sheer volume of need.

One recent Friday, I opened one email to find 57 children listed. We received eight more emails that same day, just like this one. They come every day. Every. Day.

Continue reading “Why U.S. Kids Need You To Say “Yes””

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Care You Can See, Every Day

Before Emerson could go home to her adoptive family, she needed to have heart surgery in China. While recovering, she stayed at Holt’s donor-funded medical foster home in Beijing, where the love and care she received made such a difference — her mom can still see it, every day.

When asked, adoptive mother Rachel Pace admits she doesn’t know a lot about the Peace House in China. Her 2-year-old daughter, Emerson, stayed at Holt’s medical foster home for only a short time. But circumstances surrounding Emerson’s adoption made the journey a bit of a “whirlwind.” Rachel had to learn a lot, in not a lot of time.

“Our adoption happened so quickly,” she says.  “And I didn’t feel like I was really able to learn a lot about the Peace House and the care they provide.” Continue reading “Care You Can See, Every Day”

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To Pray For Him Always

When a heartbreaking event led the Lee family back to Korea, Joshua Lee had the chance to meet a very special woman in his life — the woman who cared for him before he came home to his adoptive family.

Joshua with his foster mother and her new foster baby.
Joshua with his foster mother and her new foster baby. “Was I just like that baby?” Joshua asked his mom as they spent the day reconnecting with his foster mother.

She spent only five months with Joshua, but remembered him when they came face-to-face 11 years later.

“She was so thrilled to see him,” Joshua’s mother, Barbara Lee, says.

She even wore the necklace — a gleaming dark blue and aqua globe hanging from her neck by a beautiful gold chain.  The distance between Korea and Mexico, where the Lee family currently serves as missionaries, was great, but the necklace around her neck made her feel closer to Joshua — and reminded her to pray for him always. Continue reading “To Pray For Him Always”