Written by: Vera Mensah-Bediako
Letters from sponsors come in to the Ghana office through the Global Ministry Center (GMC) in Colorado Springs. They come in mainly by DHL, but a few letters also come in through e-mail.
When these letters are received they are sorted out and entered into the computer system to track that they were received. They are then distributed into pigeon hole mailboxes created for every church partner at the country office.
The next step is for the child development workers from the child development centers to come to the country office to collect the letters, get them to the children, make sure that the letters are replied to and then bring the replies to the country office in good time to be sent to the sponsors.
Compassion Ghana started its Child Sponsorship Program barely three years ago. The majority of the children who were registered into the program were not in school. They only got the opportunity to go to school once they were enrolled into Compassion.
As such, even though some of our children are 12 years old, you find them yet in kindergarten or in the first grade. The best children in these grades can say the alphabet and read two- or three-letter words.
So in Ghana, just a few of our children are able to read and write their own letters. It is therefore the responsibility of the child development workers at the centers, and when possible, some volunteers who help at the centers, to read letters to the children and reply to these letters.
Nana Kojo Sekyi-Arthur is the social worker at the Mount Zion Methodist Church Child Development Center. He has been with the center since it started almost three years ago. Nana Kogo, just like all the other child development workers, visits the country office once every week, if there is no emergency.
Each time he visits, he checks the center’s pigeon hole for any mail or other materials placed there by the office. If there happens to be any correspondence from sponsors to children, Nana Kojo collects them and brings them back to his office. As soon as he gets there, he makes photo copies of all the letters. The original is given to the child to take home, and the copied one is kept on file for reference purposes.
In the community where Nana Kojo works, the people are mostly fisher folks with very little or no formal education at all. They are unable to assist their children with responding to sponsor letters.
For unscheduled letters, which are not too many, when Nana Kojo collects the letters from the country office he makes sure to read all of them before meeting the children again.
The next time the children come to the center the letters are distributed. The older children who can read and write are encouraged to read their own letters and try to write replies to them. There are a number of volunteers who help.
Georgina and Enoch are volunteers who give a lot of assistance with the letters. They correct the older children’s letters. They also read through to see if the sponsor has asked any questions and whether they have been answered. If everything is done well, Nana Kojo copies all the letters into an exercise book.
Every child has an exercise book specially set aside for letters. Each letter the child writes to his sponsor is copied into these exercise books. When writing the next letter, the previous ones are read 
again so as not to keep repeating the same things over and over again. The children then copy their letters onto the appropriate sheets designed for letter writing by the country office.
The next letters to be written belong to the children who cannot read or write. For this group, Nana Kojo likes to work on the letters personally. He reads the letter to the child. If there is some information the sponsor asks that Nana Kojo cannot provide and the child cannot help with, Nana Kojo goes to the child’s house or invites the parents to the office to help in providing the information needed to complete the letter.
Sometimes some of the letters do not include any special questions from the sponsor. To reply to such letters, Nana Kogo has to keep a close observation on the child so as to discover interesting things to write about. He also usually sits with the children as he writes the letters on their behalf. He involves 
the children by telling them what the sponsor has said and urges them to also say what they want to tell the sponsor. Children are encouraged to draw pictures, which are attached to the letters. They draw things such as the country flag, trees, houses, cars and much more. In some cases Nana Kojo cuts out pictures for them to trace and color.
Scheduled letters form a greater part of the letters the children write to their sponsors. These include holiday letters, Christmas greetings, Christmas thank you letters, and Easter holiday letters.
With these letters Nana Kojo solicits the help of some of the volunteers and some of the older children. They share the number of children among them and involve the children by working with one child at a time. The children are encouraged to say something of their own accord to the sponsor.
Scheduled letters are the most challenging letters for the child development worker to deal with. Most times these letters are delayed in getting to the field office. Nana Kojo explains:
“Imagine what it is like when you have a deadline to submit about 190 letters to the country office and for some reason you cannot find some children; you are then faced with the problem of going to their homes to look for them.”
When all is done, the children’s letters are brought to the country office. Nana Kojo says that since he was given the responsibility of the children’s letters, he has become an earnest participant of every activity which goes on around him.
“Things that did not matter to me before have become worthy of note to me. I pay ardent attention to cultural practices now because I realized that the sponsors talk a lot about the exclusive things in their country and want to know some unique things about Ghana from their sponsored children.
They also like to know the current news in the country. The only way I will be able to communicate effectively is to keep abreast with what the media is saying. So I listen to the news a lot now, something I did not used to do at all.
I can gladly say that reading and writing the children’s letters has given me a lot of enlightenment. I have learned so much from other countries, and my eyes have been opened to things in my own country. My close association with the children has made me to know and understand them better and I love them afresh every new day. I bless God for an opportunity like this.”
Back at the country office these letters are checked for quality assurance: correct sponsors’ names and numbers; correct children’s names and numbers. Letters are also checked to find out if the children contributed to the writing of the letters, by looking out for drawings, especially from children who do not write their own letters.
It is also at the country office where these letters are sorted and grouped into countries of destination. The next step is to scan and save the letters for the children’s records.
After all is done, they are gathered together by sponsor country and sent by DHL to the GMC where they are tracked and distributed to the sponsor’s countries.
Print
Subscribe in a Reader
June 13th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Wow! That is a staggering amount of work for letters! I never realized how much went on behind the scenes. My thanks go out to all the people like Nana Kojo who work so diligently on this part of the ministry!
June 13th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Me either!
June 13th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I know it is unique to each situation, but I am curious to know on average how many letters the sponsored children receive each year. Are there some children who never receive letters? Is there a system in place to solicite letters from volunteers if a child never receives one? I am just curious because correspondance with my 3 sponsored children is so important to me. I hope that all children are being encouraged regularly by their sponsors.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
A sponsored child gets about 6 letters a year. Some children do not get letters at all so volunteers sometimes write to the children. You should hear the children when they get letters.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I am curious to know when are the letters translated from English? Are they translated in Colorado or when they arrive in country?
June 13th, 2008 at 11:30 am
@ LeeAnn
The letters are translated in country.
The Journey of One Letter is a good complement to this post.
@ Shelly Quiqq
You may enjoy the comment conversation on the Are My Letters Really That Important? post
June 13th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
That is a lot of work – and with so many children! I thought 25 writing projects with my grade 3 class were a lot to edit but this is a far bigger project. The 30 – 45 minutes I spend writing to my sponsored child seems just a little smidgeon of time. Off to send a birthday card to her now
)
Thanks for all the info.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
What amazing detail describing the process! This makes me all the more excited to receive the first letter from my sponsored child!
June 15th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Wow! That is a lot of work. I have a new appreciation for the people who work so hard for me to be able to communicate with my sponsored children.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:21 am
English is the official language in Ghana, so there is no translation. the content of sponsor’s letter is explained in the local language or simple english to the child. Letters bring joy to the child, so let’s keep working hard to keep the relation between the children and sponsors going.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Patience’s comment means I need to clarify my earlier one
For countries where a letter must be translated, the translation occurs in that country’s office, as opposed to the Global Ministry Center in Colorado Springs
July 7th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Wonderful post. I have recently added myself to the “volunteer” list to write to another child in addition to the girl I sponsor in Tanzania. How do we express our appreciation to all the folks who help them read and write their letters? They mean so much to me, and I’m sure to my sponsored child!
December 21st, 2008 at 11:07 am
I have been thinking the sending and translating process and the time it will take. I think that it is impossible to send a birthday card because you never know, when it reaches child. If someone has sent birthday cards, so please tell me, how have you done it.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I usually do send my sponsored children birthday cards about two months before their actual birthday and put their birthday date on the outside of the card. Even if they get the cards a little early or a little late, they’ll know I was thinking of their birthday.
February 4th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I was asking to myself why my sponsor kid did’nt write, because his age, now I can understand, and I want to support them strongly, I know God is giving him a hope and a future. Lets pray togheter for Ghana and Compassion’s work, and for all staff and volunteers
February 26th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Thank you so much for this post! I love being able to learn more about my little Ghanaian sponsored child and her country.
I noticed that the post said, “the child development center workers make sure the sponsor’s letters are replied to.” Does this mean that Ghana is on the reciprical letter system?
February 27th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Hi Alyson,
So glad you liked this post
I have an answer to your question:
We do have countries that are officially on reciprocal letters but Ghana is not one of them. Although, some of the countries we work in are doing this is some way or another even if they are not officially listed as doing so.
I hope this helps!
February 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Brianne -
Thank you so much for answering my question!
God bless
February 27th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Brianne, could you tell me, are Tanzania, Thailand and Ethiopia on the reciprocal letter format? This is a wonderful blog for learning more about our children and the letter writing process. THANK YOU!
March 1st, 2009 at 8:01 am
Hi, Brianne! To add to Barbara M.’s question, could you please list all of the countries that are on the reciprical letter list?
March 6th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Hello Alyson and Barbara,
I love how interested you both are!
And for everyone else (just in case) here is more info:
We now have 10 countries that write reciprocal letters to sponsors (this means that when a sponsor writes, their child will respond immediately, not just on the three letter per year schedule). The countries are Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Thailand, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia
March 6th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Hello,
Do you know if and when the other countries will also switch to the reciprocal letter system? I think it aids communication between sponsor and child a lot, though I definitely understand the difficulties in coordinating everything! I have a sponsored child in Haiti!!
Thanks!
March 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Hi Rebecca,
We would like to eventually move most, if not all, the countries we work in on a reciprocal letter writing process. As you mentioned, we recognize it is a great way to strengthen the connection between a child and sponsor. But of course, for our Field staff to implement this quite a lot needs to be taken into consideration. It is a lot of planning and takes extra resources.
Just because a country we work in is not officially on the reciprocal letter writing process does not mean that some of the countries are not already implementing something similar to this.
From what I understand there are no plans for the near future to move Haiti onto this process.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Hi Brianne!
Thanks for your reply! =) Its a bit of a disappointment to be honest, to know that I probably will not be receiving real replies to the letters I send to my child… (I’ve heard that letters written only on specified occasions tend to be more formal and less personal etc.) I was wondering if say a child wants to write to the sponsor over and above the 3 times a year, and their country does not follow the reciprocal letter writing process, do they have to wait for the next letter writing day to do so? Just curious! Are they all country specific or maybe project specific, on how they go about with their letter writing etc. Of course, I’ll still write often to my little boy in Haiti!
Thanks for the information! =)
March 6th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I was surprised to see Peru on here. My child is from Peru, and I’ve received one letter that was more formal, and never received any update as to what my money is being used for (including Christmas gifts) over a 9-month period. I’ve probably sent a letter every 3-4 weeks and have no idea if they’re getting to the destination.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:53 am
All of this was very interesting to read. We have a child in Ethiopia and 2 in Kenya, but receive only the 3 letters a year. We write monthly to each child. Do you know why we wouldn’t be getting letters written back to us each time?
March 7th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hi, Brianne! Thank you so much for your reply. I was very excited to see that Nicaragua is now on the list. My family has been sponsoring a child from there for almost 2 years now and we always write to her at least twice per month. We have been only receiving the 3 standard letters per year so it will be fun to start receiving lots more letters from her soon! Did Nicaragua very recently become a reciprical letter country?
March 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Steve, I have experienced some of the same with some of my children. Even though each one is from a reciprocal-writing country I do not receive reciprocal letters either. I also do not always hear that my donations have been received or what they have been used for. I won’t quit writing or sending monetary gifts but it would really be an encouragement to know that they are at least being received.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Thanks for the comments, Barbara! There’s a line between having faith God is doing what he wants to do with the money that is His to begin with, and getting some type of feedback that I should continue doing what I’m doing.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Hello everyone! I have been reading your comments and I just wanted to let you know I am looking into this process further. I will get back to you with some answers once I know
Also, I’ve loved hearing how consistent you all are to write your child/children! I have learned more and more about how cherished these letters are, especially after taking the tour of Compassion (and working here too)! I am sure you all know this, but even though you may not be hearing back from your child/children right away these letters are offering hope and love in the midst of very difficult circumstances. Thanks for acknowledging this and continuing to serve our Lord by encouraging His children
March 19th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Hello everyone,
I have answers! Steve, Candee, Barbara, & Alyson seeing as your children are in countries that are on the reciprocal letter writing process you should be receiving replies to the letters you send – not just the standard three letters. I have talked to the department that handles this and they can communicate with the field about your letters to figure out what is going on. Please contact us at 800-336-7676 or send us an email and the correct person will begin processing your request. Be ready with your child’s number.
Hi Rebecca, the reciprocal letter writing process is country specific, not center specific. If a country is not on the reciprocal process does not mean the different child development centers do not have flexibility to write more than 3 letters.
I hope this helps:) If you have more questions feel free to contact the above number and they can further help you!
March 19th, 2009 at 11:25 am
My child lives in Kenya, and I used to send lots of emails and letters to her, but only got three back a year. I eventually only wrote when I heard from her first. Now that I know it is reciprocal in Kenya, I will write more often. How long has it been that way there? I want to hear from her more!
Kathryn
March 19th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Hi, Brianne!
Thank you so much for checking into this for us. I think I will try contacting Compassion, as you suggested, about the letters because I am curious about the situation. But my family will definitely keep writing to our child very often whether or not we receive more letters from her.
Thanks again! God bless
March 26th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Hi…
I was wondering if I would be able to find out roughly how often do the children receive mail? Are they the same for all the countries or do they differ?
It would be nice to know what it is like for all the countries… otherwise, would I be able to find out for at least for the following countries?
- Haiti
- Ethiopia
- El Salvador
- Ecuador
- Dominican Republic
- Rwanda
- India
- Indonesia
Thanks!! =)
March 28th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I agree — I also have a child in Nicaragua, and I had no idea that they were on the reciprocal system. I’ve been sponsoring her for a little over a year and have gotten 4 letters, but I’ve written a good deal more than that.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Hi! For everyone who is wondering about their child’s letters:
I called a Compassion representative recently. She told me that there are many countries on the reciprocal letter list that very recently switched over to this system so it may take a little while to train in all of the child development center workers, to get the system going, and to start receiving your reply letters as a sponsor. She also told me that even if your child does not live in a reciprocal letter country they are still allowed to write to you as many times as they want to (above the required 3 letters/year). But don’t get discouraged if you write very often and still only receive 3 letters/year back from your child! The children love and treasure ALL of the letters you write. But your child may not understand or realize that he/she needs to say “thank you” for a gift that you sent, or that you like receiving his/her letters as much as he/she likes receiving letters from you. Also, younger children, or older children who haven’t had much schooling, need help from an adult to write letters which may be why the letters seem so impersonal.
I hope this helps all of you. Please don’t ever get discouraged that your letters don’t mean anything because your child treasures them so much. God bless
March 29th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Two days ago, I received two letters stapled together from my child in Peru – allegedly a reciprocal country. One letter was dated January, and the other in February. It took me more than two months to get that January letter, and the February letter was him asking for a picture of me which I sent back in September!!! I was very happy to get the letters, but can’t the timeliness of these exchanges be improved? There was no acknowledgement of a Christmas gift or a Birthday gift. Is there a way to check if my extra money sent is getting to the destination and not being spent on other things for Compassion?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I am fairly new to Compassion (December 2008) and was surprised to learn that there is sometimes no acknowledgement of a gift. Obviously, a gift should not be given to get thanks, but even if a Compassion Center Rep could jot a note saying how a family or child used a gift and/or just that it was received would be encouraging. I recently sent some family gifts in honor of Easter and would love to know that they were received!
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Hi,
I had another question…
Are there any other countries other than Ghana that the main language of correspondence used is English?
Just wondering…
Thanks!
April 29th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Wow, I am very blessed to be getting my letters from my 2 children in Tanzania, pictures too. I know this letter writing process is very timely and made more difficult when these kids are so young and many can’t write yet. Hard to imagine their daily life a world away. Just wanted to extend my thanks to all the efforts to get letters back and forth!!!
April 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
This is the first time I’ve ever written on a blog. The comments and responses have answered many of my questions. My little girl is from El Salvador and it’s been alittle under a year since I’ve been writing her. I have received more than 3 letters, but have only learned the basics about her. She wasn’t attending school, but now I think she is, based on what was said in one letter I received. How do I know for sure that she is? Or get an update on how she is doing. I truly enjoy the sponsorship, and would love to receive a new photo of her and/or her grandparents. tell her how happy I am that she is now in school if she. I just didn’t want to ask her for a photo that she has no ability to provide or embarrass her if she isn’t in school or writing her own letters. Thanks to all the staff that coordinates this important effort.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Hi Sharon,
I think I read that photos/case studies(?) are updated every 2 years. I probably wouldn’t request one directly of her, as like you mentioned, she might not be able to provide one. I have heard of people who have gotten an unexpected photo even of the entire family, but I don’t know that that is generally the case.
It is wonderful that you have received more than 3 letters. I have a few children we are sponsoring. I have yet to hear from one, but have received one letter from the others and 2 from one child. I am always hopeful when I go to the mailbox!
Have a great day.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
We sponsor a little girl in Ecuador and have been blessed with MANY letters from her. We gave a family gift once, using our tithe when we were between churches and were excited to receive a picture of the girl and her entire family, showing how the gift was used. We have received other pictures of the girl and her sisters. Yay, Ecuador!