Stories to Connect You With Compassion & Grow Your Faith

At Compassion, one of our highest goals is to help children grow to reach their full, God-given potential. Our frontline church partners across the world invest deeply in each individual, helping them discover their talents and use their skills to escape poverty, bless those around them and glorify God.

Scott, Cyndi and their four young boys love good matches of all kinds. They enjoy sports matches, especially those broadcast by Scott’s employer, ESPN. They love matching the birthdays of their sponsored Compassion children to their own young sons’ birthdays. And they love the benefit of matching gifts through Scott’s parent company, Disney, to the family’s Compassion donations.

Eleven-year-old Neema walks across the playground carrying a bottle of water. Other children are playing wild and noisy games during break, but there is something else she prefers doing. Neema — image-bearer, hands in dirt — shapes surprises from the soil like her Father God.

There are a lot of ways to fight poverty and share the love of Jesus. At Compassion, we focus on children. They are the heart of everything we do. Here are five reasons why.

In the bride kidnapping tradition of the Hmong people, girls can be forcibly married to their abductors. But churches in Thailand have been fighting for change.

As the new year begins, I’m always thinking about the calendar. It’s probably because of the yearly planning we all tend to do. (Got to get after those goals, am I right?) Or maybe it’s because every year for the past 16 years I’ve received a wall calendar for Christmas from a dear friend. Whatever the case, a good wall calendar or even a digital calendar that you keep up-to-date online can help you prepare for the year to come. Here’s how keeping a calendar helps me figure out when it’s best for me to write to the child I sponsor.

As editor of the Compassion USA blog, I always love looking back over the previous year to see which articles resonated with you the most. It gives me a chance to reflect on the powerful stories and photos that come from our photojournalists around the world and writers in the U.S. I also get an idea of what type of content to gather and share with you in the year to come. In case you missed them, here were the top stories of 2021 on the Compassion USA blog.

Seven-year-old Pesi is part of the Child Sponsorship Program at a church in Kenya. She is also a member of the Maasai people. Every year since she can remember, her family has celebrated Christmas.

A graduate of Compassion’s program gets the surprise of her life when she meets the people who sponsored her as a child.

Richart has seven children. When he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus — a serious condition where fluid builds up on the brain — he worried how he could afford treatment, especially as he couldn’t work. With the support of a Compassion church partner in Bolivia, he received the care he needed.

Vitoria was the first child I sponsored with Compassion. In her photo, she had pigtails and a shy smile. I wrote letters to her where we talked about the grades she made in school and her dreams to be a veterinarian. I watched her grow up through letters and photos for over a decade. She graduated from the Compassion program in 2015, and I never got to meet her.

If you think mall traffic is crazy where you live, you should check out the crowded markets in Tanzania! And you’ve never seen more beautiful produce than at the fruit stands in Burkina Faso. Take a stroll through some of the world’s busiest, most colorful markets and experience the wonder of how people in other cultures go shopping.