Over the last month, Holt’s child nutrition program team has traveled to 12 childcare institutions in Vietnam and China to evaluate the success of the program as well as the ongoing implementation of our nutrition, health and growth screening system. Below, Holt's nutrition initiatives coordinator, Aloura DiGiallonardo, shares the story of one boy she met in China whose extraordinary transformation illustrates how Holt's groundbreaking nutrition program is impacting the children we serve. 

In the minds of Jin’s caregivers, finding a family for him would never enter the realm of possibility.

Jin has cerebral palsy (CP), a neurological condition that affects motor function in the body. As caring for a child with CP is beyond the resources of most low and middle-class families in China, many of these families feel they have no other recourse than to abandon a child born with CP or other special needs — hopeful that others will provide the care they need. Jin too was found abandoned and brought into care as an infant.

With a weak immune system and constant upper respiratory infections, Jin was never not sick. He was extremely listless, he could not walk, he could not sit up or support himself and he had extremely limited mobility. For the first few years of his life, he laid in a crib all day and all night. His caregivers would come and interact with him from time to time and he would listen to the noise in the background of his room. But without the attentive care of a family, he missed most of his developmental milestones and had very low cognitive function. His caregivers believed he had no hope of advancing to be independent or engaged in his own life. They assumed he would spend his entire life in an institution.

Then, in August of 2015, something big happened for Jin.