We are committed to protecting children from all forms of abuse and exploitation. Our board policy communicates this clearly by stating that:

“Concern for children is the cornerstone upon which Compassion International has been built. We are opposed to all forms of abuse and exploitation and will do everything within our power to ensure that no harm comes to any child registered in our program due to his or her involvement in the ministry of Compassion International.”

By protecting children, we are responding to Christ’s mandate to care for and protect His little ones. Each of our country offices and church partners are required to designate one staff member as having child protection responsibilities within his or her role.

The Child Protection Officer is responsible for activities pertaining to training, advocacy, prevention and handling of child abuse allegations. For Compassion Ecuador, Mario Cobo has been given this key responsibility.

Why do you think the role of Child Protection Officer is important?

The Bible isn’t silent about the children; on the contrary, what it says about them is a clear example of God’s will on behalf of the kids. We need to take all the children and teenagers seriously because God does!

The thing that may wake God’s anger the most is those who make children “stumble.” Our Heavenly Father sends angels to protect the little children and guarantee them special access to the Kingdom and His presence.

Millions of children face harsh circumstances all over the world. But the most important point is that we find children from our own ecclesiastic communities, who live under conditions of extreme poverty. The Church has the unconditional obligation to serve the most vulnerable members of our societies, to speak up for them, to raise its voice for those who cannot defend themselves. All of us, the people who follow Jesus’ steps, are called to show God’s love to the children.

This is why we believe that the important role of a Child Protection Officer must be reflected by every single church partner working day by day with the children from our country. This is the reason why we developed a program for all the partners to protect the children; we are responsible.

What are the major responsibilities of the Child Protection Officer?

• To manage the strategy for child protection countrywide with a training program and an educational package for 100 percent of our church partners.
• To follow up on cases of abuse with the help of each facilitator in the field.
• To train the health tutors at the child development centers on how to handle the delicate topic of child abuse.
• To promote strategic dialogue with institutions that have proven experience and expertise on this topic in order to improve our work in the field.

Can you briefly explain how child protection is facilitated through the country office for the child development centers?

As a country office, we have developed an educational package about protection for our boys, girls and adolescents. The name of this package is “Children, God’s image.”

Our training team has already worked on this topic with 100 percent of our Partnership Facilitators and 100 percent of our church partners and their personnel. Each participant received a certificate as a children’s advocate. It’s important to mention that this educational package also has material for the parents.

The church staff, especially the health tutors, have been trained to teach the children to protect and take care of themselves and identify cases of potential abuse (legal, health, psychological and spiritual).

We are currently talking with different institutions working in the field of child protection to create strategic alliances that enable us to support the churches in the field with more training.

From the country office and through our team of facilitators, all specific cases of mistreated or abused children are followed up on. We have worked in the legal area with lawyers, reported cases to the respective institutions, provided health care and psychological follow-ups, worked on spiritually strengthening the child and his/her family, and supported the church’s actions on anything related to following up these cases.

What is your interest or passion for child protection?

To protect children from abuse is a very important issue for our society, our family, our church and most of all, for the main subjects of the kingdom of God: our boys and girls.

From my perspective as a son of God who works at an institution that advocates for all children in Jesus’ name, we look for all the members of our church partners and Compassion International offices to share and support our organization’s values, especially when it comes to showing respect and providing protection to our boys, girls and adolescents.

We must be aware of the needs that our little children have around the world. The rate of child abuse is increasing and becoming more and more alarming. This situation does not exclude the children who are part of our program; these kids’ dignity is what we will never stop fighting for.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

At only 5 years of age, Michelle had to say goodbye to one of the places she loves the most: her child development center.

Michelle has been sponsored since she was 3. She was raised by her grandmother, who registered her in our Child Sponsorship Program. But when Michelle’s stepfather found a job in another city, they decided to move there.

Often, children and families don’t tell church staff they are moving. The children suddenly disappear, so the tutors have to go look for them.

Whenever a child stops coming to a development center, the tutor or social worker will visit the child’s home to find out what is happening. The tutors even go to the schools, and usually that’s where they find out the child has moved to another place.

When Michelle stopped attending the center for a couple of weeks, her tutor went to visit Michelle’s home. The tutor was told Michelle wasn’t coming back.

“Sometimes the mother or the father travel to work to Argentina, Brazil or Spain, and they are left with an aunt, so they have to move to another house. Sometimes the parents take the children with them, so we have to remove them from the program because there is no place to transfer them. Others have to move away because the house is not their own, they are either in a rented house or temporarily taking care of a house.

“Other reasons a child stops attending the center activities are because sometimes the child or youth starts working, and either they lose interest or don’t have time or because the parents don’t want their children to become Christian,” says Elda, the Director of Michelle’s center.

Our church partners do what they can to keep the children at the centers. At Michelle’s center, staff members have brought back many children by speaking with the child’s guardians (e.g., aunts and uncles) letting them know the benefits the child will receive.

When a child moves to a new area that has a child development center in the community, the child can be transferred to that center. The staff works hard to make this happen.

Rather than moving, there are cases where the parents just don’t let the children continue attending the center.

“We recently had a case where the mom is a Jehovah’s Witness. When we visited and called her so the child could come, the mother got mad. The tutor said that the child is desperate to come but the mom won’t let her.”

At times, the youth or children themselves decide to leave the center for various reasons. Sometimes it’s because of pressure from parents to work or because they lose interest as teenagers.

“There are also cases where some children or teenagers tell us that they don’t want to come anymore, but later on we find out the real reasons. Sometimes, it’s that the parents don’t let them go or that the child is working during the day and studying at night.”

After a child leaves Compassion, the staff do the follow-up work of handling gifts and departure letters.

“When a child receives a gift and is no longer at our center, we try to find the child. When we can’t find the child we have to return the money to the country office. If we find the child, the child comes to the center to receive the gift and then returns to where he or she is living. We can wait for a child to appear for up to two months.”

When a child isn’t available to write a goodbye or thank-you letter to the sponsor, it is often written by the tutor, because the tutor is the one who knows the child best and can explain the reason the child left.

If the child isn’t located and the sponsor has sent a gift, the gift is returned to the Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs. This money is then added to the Christmas Gift Program to be shared among the children at Christmastime.

In Michelle’s case, the staff at her development center were preparing her departure forms to send to our country office, but Michelle appeared back just in time. Her family had decided to come back, and she was able to continue in the program.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Yesterday, I spent four hours with the boy I sponsor. It was our second time together, and I enjoyed seeing him again, seeing how he has grown and hearing him speak a few words of English. Three years ago he didn’t know any English.

I was delighted to meet the director of his child development center and to finally see photos of his mother, father and younger sister. I also saw pictures of the house they built with one of the family gifts I sent.

I enjoyed telling Lerionga that I’m going to be a father soon and recounting in greater detail the things I’ve shared in my letters. But all of our conversation lasted about 10 minutes, and then there was silence.

I am extremely uncomfortable with silence when I think it’s not supposed to be there.

In advance of my time with Lerionga, I imagined this meeting would be different from our first one. I imagined that conversation would be easier, that there wouldn’t be silence. I imagined it would be an “unbelievable encounter” like this. But it wasn’t.

My day with Lerionga was a great day. It was a special day, and in many ways for me it was a selfish day.

It was a selfish day because I wanted us to be “best buds,” but two days together, lots of letters and some financial gifts do not best buds make, even after four and a half years of sponsorship.

I first sponsored Lerionga because I wanted to change the world for the better, make a difference for Christ. I wanted to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And in all honesty, I’d like to hear some of that before I get to Heaven. (But now that I’ve said this, it doesn’t count if you tell me.) ☺

Being drawn to something and arriving at the destination are not the same thing. They’re separated by the size of the dream, and dreams aren’t realized with the snap of the fingers.

Dreams are made with sweat and discomfort, effort and uncertainty and moments of success and failure. They’re kneaded together with sacrifice and generosity and held together with drive, perseverance and surrender.

Relationships are like that too. And so is sponsorship.

Is your sponsorship about your child or is it about you? How about other relationships in your life? Do you look outward, for others to change, or do you turn inward, where you can change?

My sponsorship is about me. And it’s about Lerionga. I need to do better about remembering that.

My sponsorship is about me. And it’s about Jesus. I need to do better about remembering that too.

Being a sponsor is hard. But so is living in abject poverty.

Being a sponsor is hard. But only because I’m fallen and I over-think things.

Don’t over-think this. Sponsor a child or sponsor another child if you’re already a sponsor. And then don’t even think about canceling the sponsorship; Jesus didn’t cancel His.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

By attending classes at his or her child development center your sponsored child receives age-appropriate instruction in four main areas:

• spiritual
• cognitive
• physical
• socio-emotional

At KE-630, Good Shepard Isinya Student Center, all the children begin their Saturday at 9 a.m. with spiritual learning. Then, at 9:35 a.m., the subject being taught changes to follow a curriculum created for one of the other learning domains.

At 10:10 a.m. the children get a break for breakfast, and when classes resume, the two remaining domains are taught. Classes end at 1 p.m. and lunch is then served.

Classes in each of the four domains are taught every Saturday, and each class is 35 minutes long.

KE-630 runs its program in a way that is very similar to what many children in the U.S. experience in elementary school. A class of 20 to 30 students is associated with one teacher who teaches lessons in each of the various subjects.

Classes are divided into age categories (e.g., 9 to 11, 12 to 14, etc.), which are like grades, and each group of children is taught an age-based curriculum for each of the four domains.

Thus, the 12 to 14 year old children we observed at the center today had one class, in the physical domain, in which they were learning what puberty is and about the different physical changes boys experience as they become men.

In one of the spiritual classes we sat in on, another group of children were learning about God’s holiness, that He is pure and holy and that there is no evil in Him.

Here’s a little of what we saw.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

How do you say goodbye to a sponsored child who has died? Have you ever had to do that, or to say goodbye to another child in your life?

As with many things, there’s often the thought, “Oh, that won’t happen to me. That sort of stuff only happens to other people.” Then the world shook in Haiti and changed our perspective.

But children don’t just die or get injured in earthquakes. They die from malaria and AIDS. They die from diarrhea and other preventable causes. They die in childbirth and in accidents. And when they die it’s, well, it’s like this:

I can’t explain how one comes to love a child who they hardly know. But I can say that I felt like Akouvi was part of my family. I loved her. And so often in her letters, she told me that she loved me too.

I don’t think I understood the depth of my love for her until February 23. That’s the day that I found out Akouvi had died. That’s the day I felt like something had cracked open inside of me, filling me with red-hot grief. Sadness that burned so fiercely that even my tears could not extinguish it.

Read the entire post.

I found myself very distracted the day we heard of his death. I wondered how his family is coping. I wondered what kind of ceremony they would have in Tanzania to remember such a precious child. I wondered if his family realized that his sponsor family was at a loss over what to do.

Read the entire post.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

“There is so much need in Nicaragua that choosing a child becomes a real dilemma. Often we see children that don’t live near the center, struggling to be registered. Or families that want to register their children because of the situations in which they live, which are not necessarily economic needs. Or parents that think their children must be assisted just because they are church members … How to say no?”

– Mirna Alguera, Compassion Nicaragua Partnership Facilitator.

Our Program Field Manual, which guides how we operate the Child Sponsorship Program, addresses how we choose the children who can be registered in the program.

“Compassion desires to work with the neediest and most vulnerable children that it can reach . . . Therefore, it is vital to have a means by which to assess the relative poverty and vulnerability of different children in the community.”

When church staff members interview parents or caregivers in order to assess the poverty of the family and the child’s ability to benefit from the program, the staff members follow this criteria:

• Is the child between the ages of 3 and 9?
• How low is the family’s income and assets?
• Does the child suffer from chronic illness and/or malnutrition?
• Is the child able to attend school or progress in school?
• Does the child have a physical or mental impairment?
• Is the child an orphan? Has the child been abandoned or is the child being/at risk of being exploited?
• Does the child have good access to the church? Generally, a child is considered to have “good access” when he or she lives within a 30-minute walk from the church.
• Is there evidence that the child is likely to be non-transient and stable within the community?
• Was the child part of our Child Survival Program (CSP)? Preference is given to CSP graduates who meet the other needs-based criteria.

These guidelines help ensure that a long-term relationship can be developed with each child registered in the program, which is key in the holistic development process.

Angela is the mother of two boys and twin girls. All of them are the right age to be registered; however, she could only register three of them.

“As a mother, I felt bad because one of them could not be registered, but I had to accept that three of them would be registered and then find ways to provide for the other one.”

“Parents decide which of their children will be registered. I would like to register all the children but we have to accept reality (policies).” — Arelys, a secretary at Mimados de Jesus Student Center

Families usually say that although they have more children in the family, registering at least some is a great help for them. It’s a blessing from God they will not reject.

In Angela’s case, she and her husband have explained their decision to their little daughter who isn’t registered, and they have the other three share with her the gifts received from their sponsors to ease the fact that she’s not registered.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

We talk about letter writing a lot. And as a result, we get lots of questions.

Lately, questions like these have been coming up more frequently:

• Why, in this technologically advanced age, are we still relying on handwritten “snail mail” as our main form of sponsor-child communication?
• If my child has access to a computer, why can’t I e-mail him directly?
• Why doesn’t Compassion have a Facebook page or Web site for every child development center?
• We have the technology for so many things. Why doesn’t Compassion use it?

And I thought the questions deserve some attention. So, here you go.

Because we want you to have the best relationship possible with your sponsored child, and your questions are reasonable ones, we are currently considering a few technology-driven options to help you connect more directly with your child.

And we’re planning to test some of them very soon.

But as we move forward in making the options available to you, we do so with several questions in mind.

• What potential impact could the technology have on the safety of the children in our programs?
• How could giving a third-party site or application access to our database place your personal information at risk?
• How will our processes be affected (e.g., translation, tracking and training)?
• Can we administer the program efficiently, cost effectively and consistently across cultures, languages and dissimilar rural and urban infrastructures in dissimilar countries?
• Can we deliver what we promise? Can we guarantee integrity?

We definitely want to give you better, faster and more frequent communication with your child. And we’re working to make it happen.

It’s just that we’re doing it deliberately and carefully so we can be sure it’s done well, done right and done with the best interests of the children in mind.

Thanks for your patience.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

In the global fight against AIDS, the international community has brought access to lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to many health facilities around the world, but not all. Those lifesaving tablets that travel 10,000 miles sometimes don’t make it far enough.

“Because a jar on a dusty shelf in the clinic must not be the goal of the journey. We cannot congratulate ourselves and call that jar “access”. The jar on the shelf is not “access” – it is merely inventory.

“The entire business is a bitter failure without the last mile. It is the last mile that has proven to be the most difficult. It is a mile beyond the government’s reach. It is the mile into the hurting world and broken heart of the 9-year-old orphan living in the slum.

“The jar of pills traveled ten thousand miles but it needed to travel ten thousand – and one.”

– Scott Todd, Senior Ministry Advisor at Compassion

With our AIDS Initiative, Compassion is bringing the global fight “The Last Mile,” beyond the clinic, down dusty roads, through garbage-infested slums, up hills and into valleys to our church partners and beyond to the homes of our families.

True access to care means going beyond the clinic to the families who are waiting for the hope that only this medicine can bring.

Without ART, lives would be lost and families wrecked.

Our work fills the void, closes the gap and goes the Last Mile … not only in ensuring true access to the ART, but in the holistic approach to HIV and AIDS.

Our health workers know our families well, and visit those who are HIV-positive often, finding out what they need and how they are doing.

Our workers deliver care and support through the church, with the hope of Jesus Christ, to each family.

When a child needs to go to the hospital for care or testing for blood counts, we are there, realizing that without the support to get to the health center or hospital, all of the technology in the world is useless.

The machines used to count white blood cells, the x-ray machines to look for suspicious masses and infections, the medicine to treat opportunistic infections, and the medicine to help keep those with AIDS alive … all would be rendered useless without our church partner’s health workers who work as advocates, educators, comforters and confidants to our families.

When a child needs additional nutritional support to stay strong, our workers are there. When a distraught parent needs someone to talk to about a diagnosis of HIV, our workers are there.

When a mud hut is crumbling because a family affected by HIV and AIDS has lost its livelihood, our church partners are there to help the family regain their dignity.

One mile is not far, but for those living in poverty, with little contact with the outside world, that last mile is the difference between life and death.

“The Last Mile takes counseling, home visits, facilitating transport, payment for clinical services, lab tests and medicines including antiretroviral drugs. It takes a willingness to go the distance. It takes perseverance.

“The Last Mile takes people filled with compassion, whose faith and hope come from a deeper spring than the world has ever known. People of uncommon strength to walk the slums. People strong enough to carry joy in the dark. People with their hands busy at the work of healing today’s hurts even as their eyes remain fixed on eternity.

“Where do we find such people? They are already gathered. They are crowded into little rooms in the slums, in the city centers, and even in the forests. They gather to sing praise to Jesus Christ, to pray for each other and for their hurting world. They are His people, His Church.

“The Last Mile takes followers of Jesus Christ doing ministry the way Jesus did it – holistically. It takes His Church.”

– Scott Todd

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

This has been a busy year. Our world is in turmoil and much of that turmoil is affecting Compassion’s work.

Here’s a snapshot of the things I’ve reported over the past 11 months:

military rebellion, slum fire, dengue fever outbreak, H1N1 virus outbreak, flooding, strike, civil conflict, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heavy rains, political unrest, hotel bombings, protests and violence, typhoons, meningitis outbreak, polio outbreak, cholera outbreak, famine, landslide, tribal war, ferry sinking, riots.

As an organization entirely dependent on your trust, we have made a commitment to be honest and transparent in everything we do. This means, among other things, that we do our best to let you know as soon as possible when your child is affected by a crisis or disaster.

In a perfect world, here’s how the process would work:

• Within 24 hours of a crisis, our Field Communications Specialist (FCS) submits a crisis report via e-mail. This e-mail comes to an inbox that I check regularly.
• As soon as I receive this e-mail, I determine whether funds will need to be raised to provide relief, and summarize the report and e-mail it to our partner countries (the countries where the sponsors live).
• Meanwhile, the FCS is in contact with the Partnership Facilitators (PF), field-based staff members who are contacting our affected church partners.
• The FCS then submits a follow-up report via e-mail, with further details from the PFs about which centers are affected, how they are affected, and any other relevant details, photos or video.
• As soon as the church partners are able to provide specific information on registered children, the FCS e-mails that information to me. I do a quality check and then forward that information to the partner countries.
• Each partner country then contacts all the sponsors with affected children to let them know the status of their child.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? And often, the process works exactly as I just described it.

However, as we all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a disaster will wreak havoc on the field’s end, thus affecting our communications process.

Let’s take the recent typhoons in the Philippines as an example.

Typhoon Ketsana hit the Philippines on Sept. 26. Almost 17 inches of rain fell in 12 hours, halting any semblance of normal life, flooding everything in sight, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more.

Roads were destroyed, electricity was out and much of the country was underwater, neck-deep in some places.

Eighteen of Compassion’s staff members in the Philippines office (more than half) were personally affected by the flooding (including the FCS responsible for sending the crisis report).

After the typhoons, every single staff person in the Philippines office was involved in the relief efforts and for a time, Compassion’s entire staff put their regular duties on hold in order to help those in desperate need.

During disasters like this, while you are anxious to hear news about your child, keep in mind that many unforeseen and unavoidable things can occur, hindering good communication. Grace, patience, understanding and flexibility are critical.

Here are some things that might affect the communication process after a crisis:

• Getting information from the field to the partner countries isn’t always the No. 1 priority.

  After a disaster, the highest priorities are critical needs such as shelter, clean water and food. Communication sometimes takes a back seat to meeting basic needs in life and death situations.

• It’s not just the sponsored children who are affected. Sometimes the staff members themselves are in need.

  While our staff members are trying to address the immediate needs of our registered children, they also must take care of their own families and homes.

• Communication tools are not available.

  The infrastructure in developing countries is much less stable than in the developed world. For instance, telephone and electricity were out throughout Manila, remaining out for weeks in some places. Communicating with the church partners was difficult, and in some cases, impossible.

• Different cultures put different importance on time.

  Many countries where we work are not time-oriented the way we are in the United States. Time requirements do not have the same importance as they do here.

Despite this, you can be confident in our commitment to share accurate information with you as quickly as possible after a crisis. It’s just that sometimes this may take longer than we’d like.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Here’s one thing you need to consider when you ask yourself that question. It’s courtesy of Whittaker Woman and the blog trip to El Salvador.

Keep in mind, the girls speaking aren’t even her sponsored children.

If you can’t visit your children, and we understand that it’s not always possible, you need to know this. It’s an absolute truth. Your sponsored children want to hear from you!

The thing they desired most for you to know is how important being a sponsor is.

You are important. You are their angels, you make a difference.

There was one thing that they pleaded with me to share, THEY WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

I asked them if they cared if it was written on a card or an email, their answer was ANYTHING.

They just want to hear from you. Every word you say to them is one of the most important things they ever hear. They treasure it, they soak it up, they read it over and over.

So from Gabriella, Jennifer, Beronica, Cindy, Claudia, Clara, Rosio, Carolina, Karan, please write your sponsor child.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates