In Kenya, nine-year-old Joshua was too familiar with the pain of going to bed on an empty tummy. Long periods of drought caused by climate change makes it hard to grow food in his community. All they had was watery porridge, and sometimes even nothing.

“Putting my children to bed on an empty stomach was the hardest and most painful thing to do,” said Joshua’s mother.

“When the drought strikes, many children stay at home because they are too weak to study due to lack of food and water,” a villager explained why they were worried. “So you can see that these droughts are affecting the education performance of our children and therefore jeopardizing their future.”

But since sponsorship has opened the doors for climate-smart agricultural training for the whole community, Joshua’s parents had the chance to learn about drought-resistant crop varieties and water harvesting techniques. Moreover, with a pump from World Vision, they channelled occasional rainwater from the pond to their vegetable garden. Now their garden is full of maize, beans, vegetables and fruit trees, so they can harvest their own home-grown nutritious food.

By selling the farm produce, they have been able to buy Joshua books, a uniform and a pair of shoes to wear to school, so he no longer gets pricked by thorns on the way.

Now Joshua eats three times a day, and goes to bed with a full stomach for the first time.

He can also focus on the important parts of being a child: playing with his friends and learning about the world around him.

“School is fun,” he says, “I have energy to play and I concentrate better in class because I eat and take enough food to school.”

Your generosity can bring an unforgettable first-time experience to children in poverty like Joshua, as well as transforming a community in the long run to fix the root causes of poverty for children.

This New Year, what will you do for the first time?