After a stroke left her paralyzed, one single mother in Mongolia considered taking her own life. But empowered by the support of Holt sponsors, she regained hope — and her children regained the courageous woman they call mom.

The year 2010 was an especially brutal year in Mongolia. A devastating summer drought followed by an extreme winter — a weather phenomenon known as dzud — wiped out millions of livestock and affected the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of already struggling families. While distressing for the population, this pendulum of weather is nothing new for Mongolia, where winter temperatures can plummet to as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit, and summers are often short but very humid.

But the 2009-2010 season was unusual in Mongolia. The winters were much colder, and the summers were much hotter.

On one of these particularly scorching summer days, 45-year-old *Sur, a single mother of five children, was selling small items in the Ulaanbaatar marketplace — a job she started in Mongolia’s capital after her husband left both her and their children to fend for themselves. In a country where extreme temperatures have wreaked havoc on the country’s economy, men abandoning their families in this city of over a million people has become an unfortunate and all-too-common occurrence, according to Holt Mongolia staff member Gantuul Bataa.