by Sunshine Schmidt

Africa has always been in my heart and will continue to be forever. I think the idea to adopt started to take sprout when my husband and I lived in Johannesburg, South Africa. Seeing such an amazing country face such huge obstacles touched us in a way that cannot be forgotten.

Because of our connection to southern Africa, and love and appreciation of the people and culture, we looked to that region for our adoption. After our research we determined that we would need to look to other African nations with more stable and developed international adoption legislation. As an anthropologist and natural researcher, I enjoyed learning more about the different countries, and Ethiopia stood out as a proud and beautiful country. Our decision was made; our children would come from Ethiopia!

We received our referral in September of 2008 for 10-month-old twin boys. Abdurahamen (Abdur) and Nursun were going to be our sons!

21 weeks and what felt like a lifetime later, we met our boys for the first time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Kissing the faces of our children and holding them in our arms for the first time is an indescribable feeling and one that I will never forget.

We spent the day getting to know them; asking questions of the caregivers who have loved them for so long, playing on the floor, giggling at Nursun’s scrunched up smile and Abdur’s inquisitive nature, and just reveling in the beauty of our new children.

Our time in Ethiopia to receive our sons passed quickly, too quickly. We traveled a bit, and explored the southern region, the area in which our boys were born. We fell in love with Ethiopia. At the goodbye ceremony, held by the Holt staff, we cried and vowed to return with Abdur and Nursun. That will be an easy promise to keep.

The transition home has gone amazingly well, and I think these boys have quickly realized how many people across the world love them. Not only do our children have family and friends close by, but a large Ethiopian adoption community exists in Portland. We have get-togethers every 2 months and our circle of friends now includes not only families who have adopted Ethiopian children, but also Ethiopian born friends who are available to stand by our sides and help in any way possible.

Most evenings, after the boys are asleep, my husband and I kick the toys from our path, sit back, relax, and think about how fortunate we are to have had these two amazing little boys enter our lives. We are looking forward to a lifetime with our sons.

Interested in adopting a child from Ethiopia?  Click here to learn more

Holt runners and aid station volunteers came together to participate in the Omaha Marathon 2009 to raise money and awareness for the Holt Ethiopia program. Nearly 15 Holt runners participated in the 10K and the half marathon portions of the event, and another 10 volunteers helped out by directing runners along the route and handing out Holt items at the finish line.

Through the team’s hard work and passionate efforts, runners were able to raise $3,565, making the event a huge success! This money will go to provide the children in Ethiopia with much needed medical supplies.

The race began at 7:00 AM, and as the Holt team began the first mile, minds were focused not so much on the physical race that the team was running, but on the figurative race – the race to bring medical supplies to the children who are waiting in Holt’s care in Ethiopia.

Every child deserves a home, and while these children wait for their forever families, the team focused their minds on Holt’s dedication to providing a safe and healthy environment for them. Some runners wore pictures of their own children on their Holt t-shirts, those waiting to come home and those who have already come home, and this helped add a very personal touch to the race. The mood was festive, but everyone was keenly aware of the seriousness of the cause.

“Several runners commented on the picture I pinned to the back of my shirt of my son Jack wearing his most infectious grin! It helped open the door to conversations about Holt and our cause,” said Holt mom Cathy Morin.

“The marathon was a good fit for us to use our passion to do something good,” said Holt mom-in-waiting Amy Becker. “We are adopting from Haiti and it is a lengthy process, a true marathon of waiting. We started a blog for family and friends to contribute miles to our run. Weekly we have folks logging 15-25 miles and we are up over 1,000. Raising money for a quality organization like Holt, doing something we love, is a real honor.”

Juliet Brown and Cathy Morin, team organizers and Holt moms, want to extend a special thank you to all runners and volunteers and their families for making Holt’s participation in the Omaha Marathon 2009 a huge success.

Please contact Cathy if you are interested in participating as a runner or volunteer at next year’s event.

Spread the word about Holt International’s mission by becoming a Holt Ambassador

November is National Adoption Month….Click here to learn about ways you can celebrate!

Maria Nelson, Assistant to Holt President and CEO, recently traveled to Ethiopia with a group of American doctors.  The doctors, there on a 2-week long medical campaign, provided care to the children and families in the small, rural town of Shinshicho and Holt’s care centers in Durame and Addis Ababa.  The group also witnessed the loving care provided to the children at the centers.  The following is Maria’s account of their trip.

By Maria Nelson

As we walked into the Shinshicho Clinic courtyard, on the first day of a 7-day community medical care campaign, I was immediately struck by the big crowd of people gathered there for the free medical visit.

My eyes glanced over the crowd then stopped straight in front of me. A woman carrying a baby in a blanket on her back, reached for me and pulled me close to kiss each cheek. She had a look of desperation, and I could tell instantly that she was seeking immediate care for her sick baby. As she unwrapped her baby boy, my heart sank. Her child was as sick as I have ever seen in person. Pale, fragile, listless and so very thin. His wrist was no bigger around than my thumb. Her sad eyes locked on mine as she pleaded for help. Tears began streaming down her face.

Her story was heartbreaking. Widowed in the past months, she was alone now with two very small, sick children. Barefoot, she walked to the clinic and was only able to bring her youngest child, whom she carried all the way.

The Shinshicho Clinic in southern Ethiopia, with help from Holt International, is able to provide some hope even for cases like these. It is the only medical facility in this rural area of over 250,000 people.

The clinic is funded by Holt International to address child and maternal health care in this area. They provide a full range of services including vaccinations, labor and delivery, nutritional support, and general medicine. The Shinshicho clinic also offers HIV testing and Anti-retro viral support, as well as education and counseling.

I learned that the woman and her baby, after receiving care, both tested positive for HIV and will now begin receiving the care they need, as well as counseling and nutritional support for the mother.

Without the support of Holt International and Holt donors, there would be no clinic in this poverty stricken region, which is rife with infectious diseases such as malaria and typhoid. Funding of the clinic supports Holt’s goal of improving maternal and children’s health and strengthening families… It also saves lives.

Holt’s childcare center

Our team also traveled to the Holt childcare centers in Durame and Addis Ababa, where we were able to witness a farewell ceremony for all of the children traveling home with their permanent families. Each family spoke to the caretakers at the center, thanking them for their love and devotion they provided to their children while they waited to go home. During the farewell ceremony, we were able to interact with the children and listen while the children sang for the group.

The caretakers at both Addis and Durame are loving, kind and committed to giving the very best of care to each child. From the cooks, to the nannies, to the office and laundry staff, each one is dedicated to serving children.

The children’s health and well-being are the caretakers highest priority. We saw the older children (age 4 yrs and up) learning the Amharic and English alphabets, there were toys and books available for the children, nutritious meals (a nutrition specialist is on staff in the Durame Intake center), and clean, well kept facilities. The children are thriving in this loving environment, while they wait for their permanent families.

Holt is grateful for the generous donors who made it possible for the renovation of the new healthcare clinic and the childcare centers. We will continue to provide for the children and families of Ethiopia, as well as provide loving care to the orphaned and abandoned children waiting to go home to their families.

Interested in adopting a child from Ethiopia?…Click here to learn more about  Holt’s Ethiopia program

The team, including Holt Board Member and physician, Dr. Becca Brandt, will be there for two weeks providing training to a group of Ethiopian doctors. They will also be providing necessary medical supplies that will benefit the children and families served by the clinics in southern Ethiopia.

Since their arrival on October 5th, the group has traveled to Holt’s  child center in Addis Ababa, where they were able to witness a farewell ceremony for all of the children traveling home with their permanent families. Each family spoke to the caretakers at the center, thanking them for their love and devotion that they provided to their children while they waited to go home. During the farewell ceremony, the medical team was able to interact with the children and listen while the children sang for the group.

From there the team traveled to Holt’s Durame Intake Center where they began their clinical work and trainings.  The Durame Center provides care for 50 children who have been abandoned or relinquished.

In the days to come, the medical team will continue with their trainings and have about 40 surgeries scheduled at the clinic.

We will keep you updated on the medical team as they continue their mission of helping to provide medical care for families and children in Holt’s care in Ethiopia.

Read about the newly renovated clinic in Shinshicho….

Read About Holt’s Ethiopia program

By: Ashli Courtright, Managing Editor

A year ago the waiting room of a government-run healthcare clinic in Shinshicho, Ethiopia, and the only healthcare facility in the community, sat run down and almost completely empty. Many residents opted to travel long distances to other clinics, or remain in their homes as their treatable medical conditions worsened. Now, with the help of Holt International, the clinic has been completely renovated, and the residents of this community are finally receiving the medical treatment and care they desperately need, in a clean and safe environment.

In January Will Dantzler, Chairman of Holt’s Board of Directors, joined with Holt’s Ethiopia Country Director, Dr. Fikru Geleso, and members of local and central Ethiopian government, to cut the ribbon at an inauguration ceremony, signifying the opening of the beautiful, newly renovated clinic, and welcoming a new beginning for the estimated 250,000 area residents who will benefit from it.

“The clinic is 25 years old, and had never been renovated, no construction had been done to it until now,” says Dr. Fikru. “It was very unclean, and the nurses were inexperienced. We renovated the entire clinic, and did additional constructions including: sewer system, electrical system and telephone system.”

Holt, along with generous donors, provided funding for the renovation work and partial funding for a full-time doctor and several nurses who are now running the clinic and providing medical assistance to over 3,000 people a month, most of whom are women and children. “It benefits a lot of women specifically,” said Dr. Fikru.

“Before the renovation, pregnant women would often have a lot of complications when giving birth, and some wouldn’t survive. Now women are being treated by experienced nurses, helping to deliver their babies in a clean environment.”

Holt donors have also provided equipment and supplies for the clinic, as well as a vehicle that will be utilized for the transportation of supplies, medical staff, and children and families in need of medical assistance.

“We are able to provide care for easily treatable conditions, and are admitting 5-10 patients at a time. In the past, there were no beds to admit patients,” said Dr. Fikru. “We now provide basic treatment, administer IV lines, give patients anti-malaria drugs, and they usually improve in a day or two.”

Although the clinic is a far cry from what it once was, for it to continue to remain successful, improvements will still need to be made in order to accommodate the increasing number of patients and provide quality care.

“The clinic is very congested,” says Dr. Fikru. “We need to have one building for admitting more patients, and we need more doctors. While the clinic is becoming crowded, it’s also a positive thing, because so many people are now getting the treatment they need.”

Along with the newly renovated clinic, Holt is creating more space for the children in care at the Durame Intake center, as well as the center in Addis Ababa. Holt is currently trying to place children out of both Durame and Addis, and two new childcare centers are being constructed to accommodate these children waiting for families. “The center in Addis is just extraordinary,” says Dr. Fikru, “But we need more space for the children.”

“There is still work to be done, but we are making a difference: We are helping children in the childcare facilities, we have 220 children in the sponsorship program, and families in the family preservation program…We are doing whatever we can.”

Holt is grateful for the generous donors who made it possible for the renovation of the new healthcare clinic and the childcare centers. We will continue to provide for the children and families of Ethiopia, as well as provide loving care to the orphaned and abandoned children waiting to go home to their families.

Click here to find out how you can help provide for children and families in Ethiopia….

Interested in adopting a child from Ethiopia? Join a Webinar and learn more….

Something happened to me as I hugged and kissed the children at Holt’s Durame intake center in Ethiopia. Walls that had shielded me from dwelling on my beginnings began to crumble, and windows to my past began to open as I saw a reflection of myself in this generation of orphans. As most of the group began leaving the center, I found myself openly crying as I felt the loneliness of these children without a family—buried feelings that I knew once all too well were now surfacing again.

I loved seeing the children that came out to greet us at the Durame Center and I just had to hug every one of them because of the connection I felt with my little brethren. The conditions and environment were the same as I vaguely remembered from fifty years ago…the only difference was the country.

As a Korean War adoptee with no information regarding my birth, I always assumed that my biological father was an American GI. During this trip, I learned that Ethiopia, as the only independent African country, had sent soldiers to the Korean War as part of the UN coalition. This new information had implications of my biological father being Ethiopian. Quite an enlightening discovery and one that made me think even more about my unknown beginnings in life.

As we visited the remote areas, the windows to my past continued to open up as we went over terrain not unlike the war torn streets of Korea, and I saw many children running alongside our vehicles and gathering around us once we got out. I then remembered running alongside people on bicycles fifty years ago under similar conditions.

After witnessing the hardships of the mothers in rural Ethiopia, I have acknowledged my birth mother for the first time ever, recognizing now the painful process she must have gone through to let me go and somehow hope that I would get an opportunity at a better life. It is a new awareness in my circle of life, and I am a better person for it. I will always remember Ethiopia for awakening the memories of a past I thought was long forgotten, and I thank God for his revival of those memories in Ethiopia.

As we met Holt staff in both Addis Ababa and Durame, I found the Ethiopian people to be gracious, humble, very engaging and appreciative. I was also very impressed with Dr. Fikru and the entire Holt staff for how well they have continued Holt’s mission with limited resources as the needs of so many orphans are great and increases daily.

So many abandoned children deserve an opportunity to have a loving family just as my generation of adoptees received. We must do our utmost to see that Ethiopian children get that same opportunity.

By: Phil Littleton, Senior Vice President

Durame, Ethiopia–We’ve spent the last few days in Southern Ethiopia at Holt’s intake care center located in Durame, where we were once again, greeted with smiles and a flower. 50 infants and toddlers now occupy the Durame Center, where the loving staff individually cares for each child who enters its doors.

We were there when a local official brought in another abandoned infant, which seems to be a daily occurrence.  Although the children are well cared for by the staff, there are tremendous needs for the center that you can see all around. The children are bathed daily outside with cool water, where there is no working bathroom facility.

In a center where the electricity struggles to stay on, the staff continues to give quality care to children and work by candlelight to feed them.

Please pray for the children and our work in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—What an amazing day today!  Just back from our first day in Addis where a group of Holt board members and donors are visiting our newest adoption and child welfare program.  A day filled with many highs and a few lows.

Highs began in the morning with our visit to the Holt child care center in Addis Ababa.  Some of the children greeted us, walking down the front stairs and handing each of us a fresh cut rose.  They were all dressed up in their best outfits and all appeared remarkably healthy.

So many great things are happening here at Holt’s programs in Ethiopia. The Holt care center is just over a year in operation and now is the temporary home to some thirty or so children. Most of the children have been matched with adoptive families who will soon travel here to receive their new family members.

The low was listening to Dr. Fikru, Holt’s country director, explain and describe the dire situation of so many other children at our transition center in the south.  This is the center where abandoned and orphaned children are brought for care… sounds like there are tremendous needs and very little resource to meet those needs currently.  We’ll visit that area in a few days, and I’ll send an update.

by Todd Wisotzkey

Dianne and I got married in July 1993 and five years later began our family with the birth of a beautiful baby girl named Kayla.

Our journey to extend our family through adoption began when Kayla was about 2.  The idea of adopting a child had come up in our discussions before, even prior to our marriage.  The process seemed intimidating, and we were anxious about unknowns and all the factors that were out of our control.  We initially decided against pursuing adoption.  But the Holy Spirit worked on both of us, and we both independently came to the conclusion that we wanted to adopt.  This would be our way to serve God by sharing our blessings, which included our marriage and family life, access to good medical care, loving extended families, a safe family-oriented neighborhood and caring Christian friends.

We began researching adoption agencies and procedures, which took many hours on the Internet and phone conversations with agencies.  We ended up choosing a Christian agency—Holt International.

Shortly thereafter, I became overwhelmed with fear and worry about whether we were making the right decision to proceed with adoption.  We were just getting into the mountain of paperwork, and had not yet been matched with any child.  Dianne and I had prayed a lot about our decision and received many indications that this was God’s will for us, but the details and the unknowns of how we were going to handle it were causing me to question our plan.  I finally said out loud in a tense discussion with Dianne, “I think we should back out.”  In that very instant the phone rang.  I answered, and was greeted by the pastor of the church we were attending at the time, asking what he could pray for on behalf of our family.  Every week, he prayed for five families, and it took him more than a year to get through the congregation’s rolls—this week, he happened to have reached us.  I stood speechless, in awe of God’s timing of this phone call.  My doubts about the process vanished immediately.

And so we continued the process to put together the paperwork needed to apply for an international adoption—no small task, considering the instruction manual alone is an inch thick.  Finally we received the photo of Raymark, an adorable toddler living in the Philippines.  God’s strength and mercy were definitely present on my solo trip, enabling me to bring Ray home on schedule despite a typhoon, a lizard who visited my bed, and a 22-hour flight with an active little boy who had never before in his life been cared for by a male.

Dianne and I loved being parents to both a girl and a boy.  A little over a year after Ray came home, we began talking about a third child.  We completed all the classes at Family Service of Lancaster to become foster parents, in hopes of participating in Pennsylvania’s state foster-to-adopt program.  We were not able to be matched in this program but found the classes to be very valuable.

About a year later, the church we were attending began to share some space with an Ethiopian congregation.  I was involved in arranging this and became good friends with the pastor and others in their congregation.  We learned about the many children needing homes in Ethiopia and decided to pursue an adoption from this country.  Our Ethiopian friends were very supportive and still are.  The process for this adoption, however, was long and difficult (we had to use another agency because Holt did not yet have a program there).  Finally, we received some brief information on a baby girl, only months old, and very tiny.  In May 2005 I flew to Ethiopia to pick up our feisty daughter, Hiwot.

For the next year, we enjoyed our full life.  But I did not feel our family was done growing.  At the celebration dinner for our 13th wedding anniversary, I told Dianne that I noticed that we had one more seat open in our minivan.  She says she instantly knew we would be adopting again.

This time, we decided to look into Holt’s Waiting Child Program.  The children available through this program wait longer to find families because they have special healthcare needs or may be older in age.  When I visited orphanages in the past, the faces of older children always stayed with me.  Older children know what is going on when others leave, and they want families for themselves.  When we were sending our information to apply to the Waiting Child Program, a hummingbird hovered by the picture window beside where we were working.  This felt like a blessing on what we were doing, because we don’t see hummingbirds at our house too often.

The next part of the process was difficult.  We viewed photos online of children waiting for families, and we looked at each little face for some idea of whom we were being called to love.   We kept noticing the big smile of a little boy from China and decided to send for his information packet.  We discovered he was a happy, healthy boy whose outer ears did not finish forming.  He could speak and hear, but would need a special kind of hearing aid.  We prayed about him and felt drawn to him, but we found ourselves out of our comfort zone.  Dianne prayed for a week that if he was the child we were to have, God would send the hummingbird back to the picture window as a sign.  The day after we submitted our name as a potential adoptive family, the hummingbird returned to the window and hovered for a few moments while Dianne was working at the computer.  We haven’t seen it since.  But I was able to visit China for two weeks in May 2007 to bring home our son, Xiao-Wei.

After our experience with the hummingbird, Dianne mentioned there may be a reason that we received such a tangible answer to prayer.  Maybe we would need to hold on to that at some time to know we did the right thing.  One week after we sent in our paperwork to adopt Xiao-Wei, we received a phone call from the Philippines program at Holt International about a 2-year-old boy named Vincent, whom they were interested in placing with us because he is the birth brother to our oldest son.  We were overwhelmed at first, but prayerfully decided to compile the paperwork for adopting him, too.  We received two letters dated July 2, 2007, our 14th wedding anniversary.  One letter informed us of the assignment of a court date to finalize our adoption of Xiao-Wei.  The other contained the necessary original documents we needed to obtain Vincent’s visa to travel home!

So many times during these years God has delivered us small miracles in times of need.  There was the time that we had a crucial bit of paperwork on a physical form to clear up on a deadline, and the doctor we needed to speak to just happened to show up at the fall festival we attended that day.  The weekend before I left for China, at a local McDonald’s, we happened to meet another family whose youngest daughter has the same rare medical condition as Xiao-Wei.  There was the time I was leaving China and the domestic flight I was supposed to take to catch my international flight was cancelled with no hope of finding seats in time to make the connection.  After I turned the problem over to God, two seats opened up on the last possible flight, and we made our international connection as planned.  We hold so many of these instances close to our hearts as we walk in faith with our expanding family, and we give thanks to God for all He has provided.

by Alice Evans, Holt Managing Editor

Since Holt’s earliest beginnings, food and nutrition have been vital components in its efforts to save weak and malnourished children and to help them toward healthy development.  Through the years Holt and its partner agencies have brought countless children back from the brink of death simply by feeding them basic, healthy food while coaxing them with affectionate holding and words of encouragement.  Recent events, however, are making it more and more difficult to provide this simple but vital component of Holt’s care for vulnerable children.

A Worldwide Food Crisis
Beginning early in 2008, food issues rose to the forefront in many countries served by Holt.  In China, the costs of food were already on the rise when severe winter storms spiked prices even more, and lowered supplies.  A few months later, a major earthquake hit southwestern China, bringing more stress to those least able to manage it—the poor, and children of the poor.  And then came the tainted milk crisis.

In Haiti, four hurricanes struck in less than a month, bringing floods and landslides that destroyed houses and wiped out crops.  While children at Holt Fontana Village were safe, Holt stepped up efforts to double the number of cottages, doubling its capacity to care for children.  Holt also stepped up efforts to increase its family preservation program, and quickly began delivering food vouchers to help ward off starvation.

Holt International is an adoption and child welfare agency—not a disaster relief organization.  But when disaster strikes a Holt project or program area, Holt must find a way to continue meeting the needs.

China: Nutrition and a Hand to Feed Them
“Children’s faces won’t lie,” said Holt China Director Jian Chen.  She knows by sight a baby who has been receiving adequate protein and one who has not.  “Children in Holt projects don’t get sick as much, they’re more alert.  You look at skin color.  A baby who is being fed congee and rice milk may be getting fat, but that child is not as healthy as a baby who is getting proper formula.”

Nutrition is key to Holt’s work in China, but so is nurture.  In the early stages, Jian said, she used to go into an orphanage and see babies lying on their sides with a bottle propped up against their mouth.  There were so many babies that nobody had the time to hold and feed the baby.  “Foster care is so much better—somebody has the hand to take care of the children.  In an orphanage, even if you have nutrition, there is no hand to put it in.  In an orphanage, somebody might not even know if the food is good food or not.  Early on in our work in China, I saw an orphanage feeding children from a big pot of noodles, to which they had added only two raw eggs for protein.  The children would get sick all the time.  They fed them until they were full, but it was not enough protein.”

To help children get the individual attention they need, and to emphasize their nutrition, Holt moves them into foster families.  “In our joint projects with orphanages,” Jian said, “we used to split the costs for children to go into foster care—paying half the cost of formula and half the foster parents’ stipend.  Now we pay nearly twice what we did before, because we focus on nutrition and the orphanage pays the stipend to the foster family.  This way we can guarantee that nutrition goes to the children and is not compromised.”

Holt staff either deliver the formula to foster families or distribute it when a foster family comes in to get paid.  The foster family keeps a chart on the wall that tells them how to mix the formula, according to the child’s age.  Foster parents bring in their child for a check-up every month or every other month—if weight is not up to standard, the family will lose its bonus, Jian said.  “This gives us additional quality control over a child’s nutrition.”

Holt managed to sidestep most of the effects of the recent tainted milk crisis because of the high quality standard it maintains for infant formula.  Holt takes into account the content for each level of nutritional requirements, Jian said.  “We buy balanced formula—not too little, not too much of any one nutrient.  When we started our program we had learned from the South Korea program and other Holt programs what kind of standard to use.  We check weight and height in each stage in those early stages.  We did not just know from day one what worked best.  It took management.  We learned from the Korea program, but we have adapted the wisdom gained there to fit the tradition and culture of China.”

Before recent events, food prices were already high for such items as eggs, milk and meat, with prices over a two-year-period moving ever upward.  In Guigang, Guangxi province, a kilo of milk doubled in price between 2006 and 2008.  In Nanning, the price of a kilo of rice rose by more than 60 percent.  Infant formula came close to doubling over a two-year period in many locations.

But this year brought even higher prices to bear.  Unusually harsh winter storms—the worst in half a century—drove up the prices of produce right after the Lunar New Year.  News sources reported some 220 million acres of crops ruined, with transportation problems adding a complicating factor.  Rising prices and food scarcities affected children in Holt projects at social welfare institutes and in foster care, as budgets had to be stretched by special donations and creative planning.

Ethiopia: Stabilizing Children’s Health
When Gary Gamer, Holt’s chief operating officer, visited the Durame Center in southern Ethiopia in February, he met an infant girl who had been brought in several weeks earlier.  “She faced a very difficult situation in that her mother died in childbirth,” Gamer said.  “Her father was destitute and just felt hopeless about what to do with her.  Luckily, we found this child.  This child was brought into care.  And obviously she was very underweight, undernourished, malnourished… and staff faced a very challenging time trying to get her into a positive weight-gaining mode.”

Recorded on video seen by many people on the Holt website, Gamer held the tiny but attentive girl in his arms—and marveled: “You can tell that she’s responsive to some degree, she’s curious… it’s just a joy that we can see her smile, when she does that occasionally.  Bit by bit she’s being nursed back into health, through the loving care of the childcare givers—very attentive—and the doctors.  We just pray that she makes it, and we can find just the perfect family for her, because she deserves nothing less than that.  This is what this place is all about, is a transitional center to get children’s health stabilized, to learn more about them, and to get them on a path where we can find a family for them.”

Teresa* was brought back to health and is now plump, happy and living with her new family in the United States.  Says her mom: “I would love for people to know how she is doing as I know many saw the video.  In truth, if not for me seeing that video, she wouldn’t be with us now.”

Haiti: Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere

Holt International senior executive Dan Lauer visited Haiti in mid-September, just after a series of hurricanes.  “The houses in Holt Fontana Village weathered the storms well,” Lauer said.  “However, Holt currently must transport water in tanker trucks from Port-au-Prince at $100 per load.”

At Montrouis, about a half hour from the Holt Fontana Village, Holt operates a family preservation program (Fanmi Ansanm) in conjunction with Rotary International and local Rotary Clubs in Haiti and Florida. Lauer said all 60 families who receive help from Holt have been heavily affected by the storms.
“Nobody was killed that we know of,” Lauer said, reporting from the scene.  “But we are still struggling to get to them and have contracted with motorcycle drivers who can transport our staff.  People are running out of food.  We’re seeing a lot of human tragedy.  The infrastructure is really busted up from the flooding off the mountains, with flash floods through towns.  Many people were killed in one nearby town.”  Lauer noted the presence of United Nations helicopters as well as Red Cross trucks.  “The greater aid response from the world is happening,” he said.  “We want to concentrate on the children and families in our program and help get them through this crisis.”  Holt’s goal is to enable children to stay with their parents.

Immediate plans to help include:

•    Holt staff will physically visit and assess effects on all Holt-assisted families.

•    Holt will provide emergency kits that include a blanket, rice and beans, cooking oil and butter.

•    Holt will increase the number of families served by Fanmi Ansanm to 90, bringing the number of vulnerable children under Holt’s family preservation umbrella in Haiti to about 270.

Food Is a Part of Loving
Molly Holt, who has worked to rebuild the lives of relinquished, orphaned and abandoned children in South Korea for more than 50 years, notes that “food is a part of loving.”

Molly, who has seen many stunted, starved and nutritionally dwarfed children in her years of working in Korea, noted that even though it is now rare to see malnutrition in Korea, children from orphanages tend to stuff themselves with food.  “If children have no mothers, food is the most important thing in their life,” she said.  “This is why some older children go home to adoptive families and hide food under their pillows—they hoard food as a substitute.  It’s an emotional thing, food in place of mothering.”

Nurture and nutrition are intertwined in Holt’s work.  You can feed a child, but without loving and attentive care, that child will fail to thrive.  Molly noted that in the early years, malnutrition was one of the main causes of death, but other factors were cross-infection and lack of loving.

The examples of Harry and Bertha Holt, and of Molly Holt, continue to guide the work of Holt International.  Holt International aims to take the model established by the Holt family in Korea, and to adapt and replicate it in all the countries where this agency is called to serve abandoned, relinquished and vulnerable children.

But to successfully help children, Holt International needs the support of adoptive families, adult adoptees, donors and sponsors.  The moment a child comes into Holt’s care, they need a sponsor.  Holt cares for the children in foster families, childcare centers, and when possible, with their birth parents through family preservation work.  Monthly support from child sponsors helps provide clothing for warmth and protection, regular medical checkups and specialized care when children are sick.

In the face of rising food prices, Holt staff overseas and in the United States struggle to meet the nutritional needs of children in our care. And you can help provide nutrition for children in Holt programs.