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Stories written by Shelley Callahan

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A Songbird in El Salvador

A young student at the Marillac School gets the chance to show off her talents

In El Salvador, children have two choices: try as hard as they can to stay in school or submit to the constant pressure to join neighborhood gangs. Organized crime is rife in El Salvador, and recruitment starts at an early age, when kids are at their most vulnerable. Often, their parents are working and the children are home alone—that’s when gang culture starts to come knocking, angling for loyalty and increasing their numbers.

Music to a Child’s Ears

The Band that’s Saving Children in Guatemala City

In 1964, Jeanne Clarke Wood traveled to Guatemala and met 95 impoverished children, all struggling bravely through the harshest of circumstances. She founded Children Incorporated so that she could make an impact on those who need help the most — poor, often abandoned or orphaned children in countries without government services to provide even the basic necessities of life. The organization now supports eight separate programs in Guatemala, which Children Incorporated’s Director of International Programs, […]

Stocked Up for Now

Why we keep our Back to School Fund open all year round

Most parents are familiar with the ubiquitous school-supply shopping list: two boxes of crayons, nine jumbo pink erasers, 47 glue sticks, one box of tissues, three boxes of markers. But when your children run out of pencils halfway through the year, you just buy more. When the backpack inevitably falls apart by January, you buy a new one. One of our sponsored children creates a thank-you card for his sponsor. In […]

Inside the Backpack Lies Choice, Agency, Style, and Self

Providing children with school supplies makes a world of difference for them and their families

Eastern Kentucky is a hotbed of hand-me-downs. We do a lot of work in the region, and this time, we’re here to drop off school supplies and check on the children as they begin the new school year. The thing I’ve noticed most is that children here have nothing new – unless it’s something we just handed them. When […]

Back to School in Eastern Kentucky

Supplying children with education and supplies

“Back to school” is a phrase that, to many of us, conjures up images of shopping for a new pair of jeans or a new backpack, and getting as much as we can out of the last days of summer. To retailers, it means a jump in consumer spending on clothes and supplies. But for the 15 million children living in poverty in the United States, the phrase “back to school” is just another reminder […]

Recanto Esperanca

A brighter future for a neighborhood on the brink

The glamour of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio is a day’s drive away from Uberaba. But, to the children who live in this small neighborhood on the outskirts of Curitiba in dilapidated shacks on unpaved roads, the Olympics might as well be on another planet. Children Incorporated sponsors five separate projects in Brazil, helping 170 kids gain access to necessities and opportunity. While each program has a place in Andreia Beraldo’s heart, it’s Recanto […]