Have you ever wondered what your sponsored child’s world looks like? What kind of environment your child lives in?
Have you thought about where your child plays or eats or learns?
Today, by way of our online community, OurCompassion, you can know.
The latest feature gives you a direct look at your child’s center. You can view pictures, read a letter from the church pastor and use Google maps to see where the center is located.
You can also share what you know about the community by adding your photos and videos, writing a journal or posting to the wall.
Not every center has pictures yet, but we are working to get them all updated. You can help us, and your fellow sponsors, by uploading your pictures and videos.
Simply create a gallery from your center’s page, or if creating a gallery from your personal profile, just tag the album with the center’s number (e.g., the first five characters of your child’s number – KE-717).
These pages are also the place to lift up the center’s staff and children in prayer.
You’ll get updated prayer requests, as well as updates, news, stories and crisis updates for your child’s country.
The pages are also a place to learn about upcoming sponsor tours.
Don’t forget to share your pictures and thoughts afterward.
“My favorite part [of the new pages] is the photos of children playing and making silly faces!” — Stephanie Green
“I love being able to message those who sponsor in the same center, and I love the ability to zoom in on the satellite [maps].” — Michelle Wright
“The pastor letters are definitely my favorite part!” — Joe Henegan
To protect the children and staff, we limit the content we share about centers located in politically and spiritually sensitive areas.
We’ve also created guest and sponsor views so that only sponsors with children in a center can view the pastor letters or interact with the maps. This was done with the safety of the children in mind.
So whether you have already visited your child, are signed up for the next sponsor tour, or don’t see yourself taking a trip anytime soon, the child center pages can bring you one step closer to your sponsored child.
Come take a look at what OurCompassion has for you.
Cool!!
How do I find the pages?
Oh, saw the video. Heard they were called “groups”; checking it out.
They are the same thing.
They are called ‘groups’ but you can’t find them when searching them under ‘groups.’ You have to search for it under “find friends.”
My child’s center gives a map and puts the blue locator near where her center would be but gives it a different name and number. This is the same for 3 of my 4 kids. Are there multiple center names and numbers in one location? Also the center’s map marker is currently located in the middle of the ocean rather than in Ethiopia. It was in the correct city last week.
(I’m referring to ET807. The map gives it a location in the middle of the Ocean along with 3 other centers. The blue map marker says it’s ET 203.)
We are still updating some centers so if there is a glitch with the maps, I’d say check soon as we are currently working on it. Thanks!
Thank you , thank you, thank you. What an incredible blessing to have some of my questions answered about my kids’ centers and to know better how to pray for them, their community, and the leadership of the project. The letters from the pastors are wonderful. I feel like I have a better picture now of the lives of all of my kids. Great work, Compassion!
One suggestion! I would love to be able to have the same viewer rights on pages for centers where I have a correspondence child. I love the information that I can see about my girls in Kenya and Uganda (financial sponsorships), but would love to have the same for my boys in Haiti and Indonesia (correspondence sponsorships). Will this ever be available or is there particular reasoning for only providing guest access to those centers?
This feature is wonderful, but it is kind of like torture for those of us whose “Update sponsorships” does not work. I finally figured out how to find the pages through Connect – Groups – but you have to enter your project info in a very specific manner that I discovered through trial and error. For example, HA278 in the left-hand box, followed by entering the country in the drop down box to the right. Some instructions on this might be helpful, because there are many people whose sponsorships don’t update and I fear they may give up trying to access their group pages. For some reason, I was not able to write on the wall of the group I found. I assume the glitches are still being worked out..
I can see the page for one of my kids, but only as a guest. I would love to see the sponsor information as well. How do I fix this?
As I shared on my blog, I find the satellite option through Google maps so amazing. For some of our children, I can zoom in close enough to see walking paths. I can see the neighborhoods around the projects and just imagine my children walking, skipping or riding bike to the project!
If you have more than one Compassion child, scroll down to the very bottom of your profile page to be able to click the different child center groups for each child.
So Compassion’s goal is to get a photo of the development center and a pastor letter on every page? Will they be exterior photos, interior photos or both?
I think this is a huge achievement and I’m really excited about it. It’s something the sponsors asked for and I’m amazed that Compassion has made it happen so quickly! It definitely increases the value of the OurCompassion site. It makes it a must-visit site for a sponsor.
I understand the need for the guest and the sponsor views. But I have went on some Compasion trips and have photos of Development Centers that are not my child’s center and would love to share them. Can I find these centers sites and upload photos to share with the sponsors that do sponsor there? If so do I search the groups using the project number? If I can’t upload photos there can I pass them on to someone who can? Thanks. Love this feature by the way.
Based on feedback and really wanting to have as many pictures as possible, we are opening this feature up to everyone. This might still take a few days so go into effect, but check back soon and just add a gallery from a center page. You can find that center by searching for it using the code (ex: KE717).
You can also create a gallery from your profile and then just tag the album with that code-it will automatically show up on the correct center page. This feature is already working today.
Thank you for wanting to share your pictures!
Christina – thanks for the reply. Will give it a try. Just love this. It makes us feel closer. When we go on trips we don’t always get to see our child’s center so this helps.
Thank you for doing that! Some of us have kids that aren’t showing up on our profile, and also sometimes we have kids we are considering or praying for, and would like to know more about their centers.
This is a wonderful new feature!! Thank you Compassion for always coming up with new ideas to help us sponsors understand more of our children’s lives and to share with each other. IT’s really great.
I have one small question. On the CDC page that my sponsor child is in, it says ‘you are viewing this page as a guest’ even though I am logged in and it’s the right child center. Is this a bug, or should I log -in somewhere extra?
A note about OC. It’s not just a place to see the maps and pastor letters. It’s a place for sponsors to get together and talk about everything Compassion. So don’t just stop by, but stay awhile. Check out the journals, and join in the discussions with other sponsors.
I love this! It has given me great insight into my children’s lives.
This is totally awesome! Thank you to whom ever has spent the time in setting this up
The maps are not linking to the correct place. One of our children in Ecuador, shows they live in Antarctica
@Christina, I would say this is because the lat/long got switched. I looked into my maps, switched them up, and bam, I jumped straight to Antarctica. Want to try it out with other EC projects?
Yes, we have been working on the maps yesterday and today-the latitude/longitude was in fact the problem, it should all be okay now but we might still find a bad one here or there. We’ll keep our eye out for any other glitches. Thanks for bringing this up Wendy and good catch, Patrick!
I went to PH809 and the map showed the center in a different country??? what’s up with that??
The map feature is still not working correctly (obviously) but we are working to get that fixed!
How do we tag pictures all ready on our account? I have pictures of the centers I have visited but I don’t want to repost them….thanks
I Apologize Marvin for the delayed response!!! Here’s from the OC team:
Go to your existing gallery, click “edit” towards the bottom on the page, and add your tag.
You might have to minimize the “add photo” section, to get to the bottom of the page where the gallery description and gallery tags are located. Don’t forget to hit “save gallery” after typing the tags (if multiple, separate with a comma) and you are good to go.
I must still be confused. How do I find this info? For the life of me, I can’t find it! Help?
What specific info are you looking for?
I’m actually trying to find the Child Development pages — how do I find them? Thanks!
What I usually do is, sign in of course, go to ‘connect’, then ‘find friends’ and click on ‘find friends.’ From there I put in the name or number of the CDC I am looking for and click search.
There may be a better way but that is how I do it. Hope that helps a little!
You shouldn’t use the ‘find friends’ way of doing it unless one of your projects isn’t listed. This will only sign you on as a guest, and not as a sponsor, and you will not be able to see the pastor letters. You need to go to the bottom of your profile page, and at the right side, it should have a list of your projects, or if you have many kids, do a ‘view all’ to show the projects. If you have any questions on OC, either put them in your status, in which case someone will answer them almost immediately for you, or there is also a group called 123 for new members that you can join, and we have several of the regular members in that group that will answer any questions as soon as possible, or tell you where to get answers.
Thanks for this response Debbie! I’m still a little new to Compassion and the OC so I was hoping someone who knew better would post.
Hello sister in the name of GOD thank you $ well done whatever your doing,we are very happy or glad for what u do, were by almight will reward your works of releasing children from poverty. may GOD be with you; Matthew 28;19
So this is different form My Account on Compassion’s site right? (speaking of which, the ifno on those links seems outdated – 2002 – for the country, region, student center) New here…
I’m guessing that the country, region and student center information is the same as what is posted on our Compassion.com accounts. Awhile back (at least 2 years ago), I asked CI how often the project information was updated on my account. I was told that it generally is not updated unless something significant changes with the project. For instance, the information about food the community eats, services the project provides, and the size of the community, weather, warmest month, etc (project and community information) generally do not change. I hadn’t thought of it that way before-I’d simply felt that if my child information is updated more than once every two years, why not update everything. If I was to describe the foods eaten in my hometown or the warmest month of the year in my hometown, I don’t think they would change significantly from year to year. I was told that the country information is similar, and things are updated when something substantial changes. Perhaps someone from CI could clarify how a substantial change is identified and then posted about.
Any chance the GU892 page will be updated? Maybe I’m the only one having problems getting the letter and such to download?