“I miss my country, family and friends very much,” says Jessica, 17. She and her mother left Venezuela for Ecuador four years ago. Jessica was 13 years old when she made the approximately 28-day journey. She now lives in Ecuador, where she recently attended a menstrual health workshop, which took place in conjunction with the food project you supported.

Whether families have been on the move for less than a month or more than a year, acquiring food is their primary concern. Hygiene items, like pads and soap, are also high on their list.

Few [Venezuelan families in Ecuador] have access to jobs and social benefi ts says Joel Vera, a food assistance project manager with Plan International Ecuador. “Families want to live with dignity, to eat with dignity.”

Girls like Jessica also want to squash menstruation myths that force girls to skip playing sports or avoid certain foods, during their period.

“We must overcome taboos,” says Jessica. “Menstruation does not mean we have to prepare for marriage. We want to be girls, to play and not be affected by these myths.”

At menstrual health workshops these taboos are debunked and girls also learn how to promote equality and protection from violence in their communities. “[We] got closer to one another, lost [our] shyness and were able to work as a team. [We] felt free,” she says.

Despite the hardship she’s faced, Jessica cares deeply about helping those around her, a quality her mother instilled in her. “My mother shows that strength of character [is possible] without losing sensitivity of heart.”

“At noon, the water supply would run out,” says Josue Bassantes, an architect, describing one of the schools in Ecuador that he worked on through the ECW-funded project. “It was hard for the students to fi nish the school day under those conditions.”

There was no more budget for public school maintenance. “An inspector told me that one of the bathrooms we fi xed hadn’t worked for 15 years,” says Pablo Daza, a civil engineer who also worked on the project with Josue.

The government allocates funds on an annual basis for public school maintenance,” says Pablo. “Since 2015, when oil prices fell, the budget has been much more limited. It’s not enough for all schools.”

For over seven years, not enough funds fl owed into public schools. Now, to make matters worse, many more students have poured into public schools because of COVID-19 and the Venezuelan migrant crisis.

“Before the pandemic, there was higher purchasing power,” says Pablo. “Parents could afford private schooling. But many began to have economic problems due to the pandemic, so they transferred their children to public schools. Now the public system is overwhelmed, which has increased the burden on the sanitation system.”

But thanks to people like you, with help from Josue and Pablo, 10 schools fi nally got the fi xes they so desperately needed – and nearly 12,000 children could once again learn in a clean environment.

Josue returned to the school whose water supply he replaced. “The students were very happy,” he says. “They could use the bathroom normally and continue learning.”

And it’s not just the plumbing that changed; plumbers changed too, thanks to staff training sessions and new tools. “Janitors told us, ‘This is the fi rst time someone has given us specialized training,’” says Pablo.

“Strong women participated in the training. They broke the myth that plumbing is only for men. They realized they could do it themselves.”

After years of alternating drought and fl oods in Zimbabwe, rural farmers struggled to produce enough food to feed their families, let alone grow enough to sell to those living in urban centres. Faced with food shortages, rising unemployment and a high cost of living, city-dwelling families were hungry.

No matter where you live, city gardening is a challenge. But in urban communities in Zimbabwe, access to both space and water is especially limited, so Plan International helped introduce keyhole gardens, along with conventional and hydroponic gardens, to households in crisis.

“The keyhole model overcomes the challenge of how to grow nutritious food using only a very small piece of land,” says Wilbert Chirima, program manager at Plan International Zimbabwe. “It saves a lot on water and is also a labour-saving technology, which means even elderly people can participate in maintaining the gardens.”

A keyhole garden is a small, round raised bed with a “keyhole” containing a compost pile at its centre and a notch cut out at the front for gardeners to access the pile. The garden is built with drainage and soil layers to retain moisture and nutrients, making it more productive than conventional gardens. Best of all, it’s a low-cost design in which stones or bricks form the walls of the garden while broken clay pots, stones or iron scraps (such as pop cans) are used for the drainage layer. Household wastewater from washing dishes and laundry is run through the compost layer to provide moisture.

“The keyhole model was so successful that it spread throughout the region and even into rural areas,” says Chirima. There were fi ve keyhole gardens across six wards in December 2020; by November 2021, there were 81. Families could now grow carrots, spinach, onions, Swiss chard, turnips, radishes and beetroot.

“I have constructed a keyhole garden of my own and planted a variety of vegetables; I am now drying some in preparation for the hot season when vegetables will be scarce and expensive,” says Betty, a gardener in the program.