Mukarutembesa Jean D’ Ark, 49, is a single mother for four children. When she gave birth to her now four-year-old twins, her husband abandoned the family, leaving a kind stranger at the hospital to pay Jean D’Ark’s bill of roughly $7. Jean D’Ark’s family lives in the one-room house of a friend, not owning any land of her own to build a house on. Two of her children’s education is sponsored, while her twins are too young to begin school. All four attend Gardens for Health International’s Early Childhood Development Program, where they are fed once a day.

Twins Phina and Phiona are four-years-old, they should begin school in 2018 but Jean D’Ark is unsure if their fees will be sponsored, as her elder children’s fees are.

Ange, Jean D’Ark’s second eldest child, relaxes on the family’s one mattress in their home. Ange has her school fees sponsored.

Each of Jean D’Arks’s children has two sets of clothing and one pair of shoes. “Even though they don’t have many clothes, they at least wash whichever they own with soap.”

Elia, Jean D’Ark’s son, holds the only photo they own of Phina and Phiona as babies, taken on the day of their birth, the same day their father left them.

Phina leads her mother, Jean D’Ark, through a small bungalow that holds the Gardens for Health Early Childhood Development Program.