We said we’d do it again. And we’re doing it. It’s time for a new blog banner.

Join our Flickr group and upload your photos of children in poverty. We’re looking to choose one to use as our new blog banner.

Here’s some of the good stuff people have already shared with us.

drewfrancis1 took this photo. Click on it and you can see his whole photostream.

fromthebalcony1 took this photo. Click on it, and you can see the whole photostream.

topaaz took this photo. Click on it, and you can see all of her photostream.

carolina_assuncao took this photo. Click on it, and you can see Carolina’s entire photostream.

Hope you don’t mind that we have Flickr on the brain this week.

If you want to let your Twitter followers know about this, here’s a ready-made tweet for you to use.

• Click the link above – “ready-made tweet”
• Log into Twitter.
• Send the tweet you see already written for you.

Or you could also tweet something on your own … like this copy:

• Compassion is updating the photo in their blog banner. Upload your photos to Flickr for consideration. http://digbig.com/4ydhj

Children in poverty … through the eyes of Eric Chapman, one of our friends in Flickr.

If you have difficulty viewing the slide show here, you can also check it out in Eric’s photostream.

Upload your photos to our Flickr group. Show us how you see children in poverty.

Right before Thanksgiving, I was rootin’ around in our digital asset management library and saw some child photos I absolutely had to share. Photos of children reading letters from their sponsors.

The photos helped me picture my sponsored child, Lerionga, reading letters I’ve sent him. They drew me closer to him.

Some of these photos are old – five or six years. Others were taken just last year.

Some of these children have left our program, and some have sponsors from countries other than the U.S.

The exciting thing is that we were able to contact several sponsors and let them know about this post, so they could download the photo.

Any time I can do that for you, I will.

Here is what I speak of – the sponsor letter photos.

Even though the Compassion Bloggers trip ends today, you can still advocate on behalf of children in the Dominican Republic.

Add these banners to your blog, if you haven’t already grabbed them from somewhere else; your readers will be instantly transported to a place where they can choose to sponsor a child from the Dominican Republic.

<a href="http://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm?referer=blogdr"><img border="0" src="http://blog.compassion.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/120x270_dr.jpg" alt="120x270_dr" title="120x270_dr" width="125" height="270" class="size-full wp-image-902" /></a>

<a href="http://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm?referer=blogdr"><img border="0" src="http://blog.compassion.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/150x200_dominican_republic.jpg" alt="150x200_dominican_republic" title="150x200_dominican_republic" width="150" height="200" class="size-full wp-image-904" /></a>

And here’s a slideshow of all the photos from the trip – more than 330 when this post was written.

Wanna see a bigger slideshow?

Hey! Remember way back in mid-August when we asked you to join our Flickr group and to upload photos.

Do you remember that we also said, “It’s time to change our banner. And we want the next photo up there to be yours.”?

Well…we did. And you did.

• 22 people joined the group. (And we still have room for more!)
• 652 photos were uploaded. Woo hoo! (And we still have room for more! Are you getting that? )
• One photo was chosen for our new blog banner. Here it is, courtesy of AlyssaEryn.

I took this picture last summer in Tena, Ecuador. It’s a small village that is actually about 20 miles away from the place where Jim Elliot and Nate Saint where killed in 1956. I was there doing a Bible camp for kids living along the river.

The little boy in the picture is named Christian, and he stole my heart from the very first day. At the time of the photo he was five years old, but I’m not sure of his exact birthday. A natural model, he would often pose so I would take his picture, then run over to me to view the tiny screen on the back of my camera. – Alyssa

Our next blog banner could be yours. We’ll be doing this again in a few months, so keep uploading.

I’m going to Mexico! And I want you to come with me.

I was left behind once, and I’m grateful it wasn’t in the “missed the Rapture” sense. Because of that experience I will do my best to make you feel like you’re in Mexico with me.

I’m going to Mexico as a co-leader on a sponsor tour, not as a Compassion Blogger.

My first responsibility on the trip is to support the sponsors who are traveling with us to meet their sponsored children. However, you will always be in my thoughts.

I intend to:

• upload photos to our Flickr photostream, and I’ll add the best ones to our Flickr group, which you can see in the sidebar under Your Flickr Photos.
• tweet – send regular text updates of what’s going on – so follow us on Twitter
• write colorful and moving commentary you’ll find here, on this very blog
• take some Blair Witch/Cloverfield amateur-style video to share with you when I get back
• eat lots of beans and rice
• hug lots of kids
• et cetera

I don’t sponsor a child in Mexico but if you do, and they’re at one of these child development centers, let me know. I will TRY to get a photo of your child for you. I cannot promise anything other than I’ll try.

The child development centers are:

• The King’s Children Ambassadors Student Center (ME-730)
• The Jesus’ Friends Student Center (ME-737)
• The House of Bread Student Center (ME-708)

Please don’t leave your child’s name or number in your comment. Just let me know you have a child at one of the centers and someone will contact you via email to get the information.

We have an account at Flickr, a photostream they call it, where we upload our photos … but we don’t get out of the office that often ’cause we be Webbies, so we don’t get a lot of photos to upload.

We’re working on that.

We also have this suh-WEET! Flickr group where anyone can upload photos – even YOU!

Especially you.

Right now, we only have 23 members in the group and 121 photos. But what we do have is … well, why don’t you tell us what you think? And while you’re at it, add something to the stream.

drewfrancis1 took this photo. Click on it and you can see his whole photostream.

And our own Brandy Campbell took this photo when she was in Ethiopia earlier this year.

You remember Eric (aka chappyphoto), right? It’s his photo in the blog’s banner.

All of that is to say this, which if we were following sound web writing pwinciples we would’ve said at the beginning of this bwog post …

It’s time to change our banner. And we want the next photo up there to be yours.

So upload your photos to our Flickr group now ’cause we wanna see what u got.