Ayumi Miyaura remembers her sadness in seeing young children at a day care center in an Ecuador prison where their mothers were incarcerated. Some of them, she learned, would go on to follow a similar criminal path.

When Miyaura, a former pyrotechnician, thought of how she could give them a taste of a better future, what came to mind was hanabi — the Japanese word for fireworks. Uplifted by fireworks herself, she wanted to share that experience with children — as well as the broader public — in the Latin American country.

She admits to struggling to explain how exactly her mission to stage a fireworks show in Ecuador would make a lasting impression on children who grew up with their mothers in prison.