Notes From The Field: October 2025

Recent updates from Holt-supported family strengthening and orphan care programs around the world!

Cambodia

Our team in Cambodia recently distributed new backbacks, uniforms, shoes and school supplies for 1,320 children in educational sponsorship — ensuring they were ready for the new academic year beginning in November. Thanks to Holt sponsors and donors, children in Cambodia also receive regular check-ins and advocacy from Holt’s on-the-ground staff, tutoring and support through graduation, and scholarships for high-achieving students to attend college.

With grant funding, Holt’s team in Cambodia has in recent years worked alongside the Cambodian government and several leading international aid organizations to develop more nurturing care alternatives for the thousands of children living in Cambodia’s institutional care centers. These care models include kinship care, foster care and domestic adoption. Through kinship care, Holt works to reunite children with their birth families — if not parents, then aunts, uncles or grandparents who can provide the kind of loving, attentive care that children just don’t receive in institutions.  Not every child has a family member who can care for them, however. For these children, Holt developed another alternative — foster care. But ultimately, the goal is to ensure a permanent, loving family for every child. To that end, in 2021 Holt’s social work team helped introduce for the first time, a formal, ethical system of domestic adoption.

Most recently, in rural Battambang province, Holt’s Cambodia team helped two boys reunite with their sister and grandmother after spending nearly five years in foster care! Another girl who had been in foster care for five and a half years joined her prospective adoptive family for trial placement before formal adoption proceedings.

Colombia

Through our partner FANA in Colombia, preschool children recently celebrated Love and Friendship Day! With the support of sponsors and donors, the children engaged in an enriching experience filled with music, imaginative play and affection, aimed at strengthening emotional bonds and sensory development. Infants at FANA enjoyed an early-stimulation painting workshop, during which they explored textures, colors and movements that sparked their curiosity and joy. 

Through the FANA preschool program, children under age 5 receive nourishing meals, a critical early childhood education, enriching experiences like music, art and PE classes, and the nurturing care of trained caregivers — helping them acquire the skills needed for healthy social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. With the support of sponsors and donors, children with special medical or developmental needs also receive speech, occupational or physical therapies. 

To help break the generational cycle of violence in families, Holt sponsors and donors also support FANA’s Center for Parenting Education. Parents receive training in non-violent conflict resolution and positive ways to discipline their children through this program. At daycare, children receive individualized counseling as well as experiential learning opportunities to help them overcome challenges, cope with trauma and grow to their fullest potential. Ultimately, these two programs help to prevent family separation in vulnerable communities in Colombia, and create a safe, secure and supportive environment for children to grow and thrive.

Ethiopia

Thanks to Holt sponsors and donors, over 3,900 children in Holt’s early childhood care and development (ECCD) and primary education programs in Ethiopia recently received supplies, uniforms and school fees — preparing them for the start of the school year!

In impoverished rural communities of Ethiopia, Holt supports children in over ten primary and secondary schools each year — providing textbooks, reading materials and other school supplies. Donors make it possible to provide yearly intensive trainings for more than 200 teachers, and also support improvements to the schools by equipping classrooms with desks, chairs and chalkboards, improving WASH facilities and installing libraries.

In Ethiopia, one major educational roadblock that girls in particular face is a lack of safe bathroom facilities or resources for menstrual hygiene. Girls often drop out of school because they have to share bathrooms with boys, and even male teachers. These bathrooms rarely have locks or even doors. Without safe facilities, school becomes dangerous for a young girl. And a teenage girl beginning puberty without the necessary feminine products might stay home altogether to avoid embarrassment and harassment from others. But with the support of sponsors and donors, Holt Ethiopia now provides resources to maintain girls’ menstrual hygiene and health — including safe bathrooms with doors that lock.

India

Recently, Holt’s local partner in Bangalore, VCT, celebrated National Nutrition Week in its child development centers with activities designed to teach children about healthy food. Sessions included identifying pulses and fruits, planting samplings and making fruit-themed crafts. Children also prepared fruit salad and shared it together. The event combined practical learning with creativity, helping children understand the importance of nutrition through enjoyable and memorable experiences. 

India has among the highest rates of children facing hunger and nutrition-related health problems in the developing world. To help address the threat of malnutrition and its lifelong consequences, Holt sponsors and donors supplement the nutrition of many of the children and families in our family strengthening and education programs. In Bangalore, children from an especially vulnerable community of migrant families are able to attend a Holt-supported daycare program. Here, they receive an early education and have a safe and enriching place to go during the day while their parents work. They also eat nourishing daily meals, which in some cases may be the only meal they eat all day.

Mongolia

In 2016, Holt sponsors and donors began supporting an informal school called the Red Stone School for children whose families work in Ulaanbaatar’s nearest garbage dump. Many of the children worked alongside their parents, searching the refuse for anything they could eat or sell. And few attended school before the Red Stone School opened. But here, the children found warm refuge, nutritious meals, education, dignity and opportunity.

Recently, several students from the Red Stone School met eligibility standards to enroll in the public school system. This is a great achievement as the ultimate goal of informal schools is to help children catch up and eventually enter the mainstream educational system. Fifteen students recently transferred to public schools. And today, in addition to the Red Stone School, Holt sponsors and donors support five more informal schools across Mongolia for children excluded from traditional education.

Uganda

Children in Holt Uganda programs also headed back to school in September! With the support of sponsors and donors, 904 preschool children received essential school supplies as well as routine health and nutrition assessments. With donor funds, school fees were also paid for over 1,400 primary and secondary students.

In the rural villages where Holt sponsors and donors support children, more than 30 percent of 6- to 9-year-olds have never attended, or are not able to attend, primary school. The reasons vary but are primarily due to a few main factors. First, education is very expensive in Uganda. The cost of school fees, books, supplies and uniforms is too much for families living in poverty. In rural areas, school may also be too far to walk for some children and few families can afford the fees for them to attend a boarding school. But every year, Holt sponsors and donors make it possible for over over 2,000 children living in rural villages in Uganda to attend preschool and primary school.

Every year, Holt’s Nutrition and Health programs also make a big difference for children and families in Uganda. With the support of sponsors and donors, children in Uganda receive nutritious meals every day at school or at early childhood education centers. Staff at early childhood centers monitor each child’s growth to ensure they are developing at a healthy rate, and make adjustments to their diet to meet any nutritional deficiencies. Holt staff in Uganda also empower families with resources to grow their own food or raise livestock for eggs, milk and income. Through Holt’s Child Nutrition Program (CNP), families and caregivers in Uganda also receive training in proper nutrition and feeding for their children.

Recently, 853 caregivers received Holt’s CNP training; 403 pregnant mothers received antenatal services; and 235 women received family planning services.