My trip to Bolivia has come and gone, but much of what I saw is still in my head and, thankfully, won’t go away. Urban poverty has a unique look: shanty houses hiding behind nicer ones, planned but unpaved, muddy roads and shops to buy from but no money to spend.

I met a young boy who was born without an ear and can only hear very loud sounds. But his father’s passion for music became the boy’s, so with the help of his ChildFund sponsor he brought a set of drums. He now plays traditional music in a band on weekends and special occasions, earning money. He’s even made a CD and proudly gave me a copy.

Even though it was a national holiday when I visited, the schoolyard was packed for the opening of the Early Childhood Development center’s new classrooms and cafeteria, funded through ChildFund. About 1,000 kids will benefit - more kids attending the center and all eating their meals in a safe and clean environment. Three- and four-year-olds, attired in cultural dress, entertained the crowds. Like little kids everywhere, sometimes they remembered their dance, and sometimes not!

I’ve returned to the U.S. in the middle of a Mid-Atlantic heat wave that has brought severe storms and power outages. I think about the billion people living in poverty worldwide. They have no air-conditioners, so they don’t worry about losing power. In the heat, they get some relief as the sun sets. I also find myself reflecting on how tough life is in winter for the very poor who live in Bolivia’s high mountainous terrain. The cold nights bring special challenges to moms and dads as they struggle to keep their children warm. It’s good to put hardships in perspective.

The two Bolivian mothers cried, but for very different reasons.

Maclovia’s tears were ones of sadness as she relayed her life’s story. After her first husband died, leaving her with one son, Maclovia soon remarried and had four more children. But her second marriage was unhappy. Her new husband cared nothing for her first son – and often demanded that she not feed him. He also cared little for his wife and own children – physically abusing them and once forcing them to live on the streets.

At first she struggled hard to survive: “Sometimes we didn’t have a place to live; I had to sleep in parks and protect my kids from the cold with my own skirt. We had nothing,” she recalls. That’s when the staff of the local ChildFund program heard of the family’s plight and enrolled the youngest daughter in our programs. Maclovia became involved in our mother’s club, where she developed a network of support. But, most important, she developed the strength to stand up to her abusive husband and finally leave him.

With additional support from ChildFund, Maclovia and her children are gradually becoming more self-sufficient. “Now it’s not easy to pay rent, but I have a place to live and work—washing clothes and domestic chores. All my kids are going to school.”

Maclovia and I talk in her one-room, patched-together home, as the cold mountain air blows through the broken windows. Yet, thanks to ChildFund, she has warm blankets on the beds, her children are enrolled in our afterschool tutoring program, and the family has access to a nearby health center if they get sick.

Nevertheless, the pain of Maclovia’s life is clearly etched into her face and evident in her tear-filled eyes. Even sadder, the dull, listless eyes of her 10-year-old daughter speak volumes of the misery that one so young has already endured. ChildFund Bolivia and our partners are providing care and attention to help this young girl heal and move forward with her life.

On another home visit, I meet Albertina, whose eyes fill with tears of deep pride and appreciation. Albertina’s five children are thriving; two of them are already in college and the rest are preparing to follow the path to higher education. One of the older daughters, an engaging industrial engineering student, relays her family’s story to me.

The family has been involved in many ChildFund’s programs for well over a decade. For the daughter, the greatest value has come from the youth programs that encouraged her self-confidence and determination. For the soft-spoken mother, it’s the early years of ChildFund assistance that she remembers as lifesaving. With so many mouths to feed, she would walk all the children to the ChildFund center twice a day for meals. The children grew stronger.

Today, Albertina’s high-school-age daughter proudly describes her newfound financial independence made possible by her after-school job as a maid. She earns enough to pay for all her clothes and school supplies and doesn’t have to burden her mother and father. For parents who both left school after sixth grade, raising such educated and confident children has been no easy feat. The love within the family is palatable in the room.

By the way, that one room serves as the family home – all five children and parents live and sleep in one room, dominated by a large fridge that the older daughter won in a contest. Life is still financially hard for this family, but you can tell that these children are going to make it.

When I ask the older daughter if she thought her future children would be sponsored kids in our programs, she says. “No,” adding that they wouldn’t need support. Instead, she plans to be in a position to help her own and other children.

Two mothers, with different stories and different tears.

No organization or project can fill the irreplaceable role of the family in the life of a child. But when poverty or vulnerability makes this role too hard to manage alone, someone needs to be there to help. Every child deserves that much.

As we set off to visit children and families in our ChildFund Bolivia programs, we travel through very poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of La Paz. About one hour from the city’s downtown, small adobe brick houses seem to hang from the cliffs of these extremely dry and eroded mountains and hills. This makes transportation as well as access to clean water and health services difficult for these families.

But even amid these hardships, it’s amazing to see how children and mothers are so eager to participate in our after-school programs run by local partners Avance Comunitario and Niñas San Gabriel. Even though children attend school in the morning and have to climb up and down hills to get anywhere, they still want to come to the center and do some more work.

At the ChildFund-supported centers, children receive help with their homework and reinforcement in language, writing and math skills. They also have the opportunity to participate in music, art and crafts. These well-structured programs help kids do better in school. I was pleased to see how creative teachers are at designing activities to accommodate children of different ages in the same class.

“We learn, we play, and we are not alone,” says Ivan, an 11-year-old boy, describing what he does at the center every week.

“I like to come here because the teacher explains to me, and now it’s easier for me to do my homework,” says little Dayana, 9, who wants to be a pianist when she grows up.

At this center, we also offer early childhood stimulation sessions for young children and their mothers. “For us mothers, ChildFund is a big help,” says Guillermina, a mother of three. “Our kids are no longer afraid to talk. They are learning about their rights, and [it helps] them develop better. I, too, learn how to be a better parent.”

My week in Bolivia is delivering inspiration, once again affirming the reasons why ChildFund works with children of all ages and involves community members.

We visited the Lucerito Integrated Development Center near Santa Cruz, where our local partners work hand in hand with communities, achieving extraordinary involvement by mothers, fathers, youth and volunteers who help deliver services and administer the center.

Chinda Ramos is one of the mothers who volunteers her time at the center, having received finance training from the Lucerito center’s accountant. “I run the accounting controls and as a leader mother I like to collaborate and participate,” she tells me. “We have monthly meetings to inform parents how our finances are going, and our books are totally open and published in a board for everyone to see that we work with transparency and accountability.”

I also meet Betty Zubieta, coordinator of the Lucerito project that started 10 years ago, serving 120 families. Today the project reaches more than 700 families including 1,100 children with health care, early childhood development, education support and vocational training for youth and mothers. “Our work is to prepare children and youth so that in a few years they will be able to run this center by themselves,” Betty says. “They are the future, and we are achieving it.”

It’s inspiring to see the high level of youth participation, and an equally high level of personal accountability. Seeing the youth so committed and participating in so many activities—from their own youth leadership clubs, to organizing communications and computer skills workshops for little kids and preventive dental and health campaigns for the community—makes me think that they are reaching their full potential and truly making a difference in the day-to-day life of their communities.

I’m on the road this week, visiting ChildFund programs in Bolivia, where we’ve worked with local partners since 1980.

Yesterday, we visited children and families who live in the impoverished urban areas of Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s second largest city. The rainy season is just starting, and the roads to get to the neighborhoods where we serve thousands of families were just terrible. Even in this urban area, we traveled probably 20 minutes on unpaved roads, with huge puddles of water and mud everywhere. The rainy season brings on many ailments in these communities, including diarrhea, respiratory and skin infections as well as deadly dengue fever.

In the neighborhood of Lero de Mayo, where our local partners Villa Alegre and Lucerito have been working with ChildFund’s support and technical assistance for almost 16 years, families opened their homes and hearts to us.

I had an opportunity to talk with Jimmy, now 19 and previously sponsored. He’s very close to graduating from high school, and his parents are so proud of him. He’s a confident young man, willing to support his parents, little brother and sister, and also eager to continue with his education. He wants to become an architect. Jimmy’s at the top of his class and hoping to get a government scholarship to go to university. I was happy to see such strong support for education among the community’s parents. Their desire for their children to continue with their education is key to their children’s success.

We also visited Maria Elena, a mother of nine children, six of whom are still at home. A few years ago, they received a cow through ChildFund’s Gifts of Love & Hope catalog. The girls named the cow Regina, and for Maria Elena the cow was the “greatest surprise and blessing.” The cow provides a steady supply of fresh milk for the girls during their growing years and enough extra that Maria Elena is able to contribute milk to the community center each week to help reduce malnutrition in other children. When Regina has a baby calf, Maria and family give the young calves to other families so that this chain of benefits can continue to extend and multiply in the community.

It’s gift of love that truly gives hope to communities like this one in Bolivia.