What Happens When an Unsponsored Child Needs Emergency Care?
Here’s how ministry supporters helped Compassion to step in and offer support for 4-year-old Yoskiel and his family in Indonesia when he was diagnosed with eye cancer at age 3 — just a few months after he joined our program and didn’t yet have a sponsor.
Continue Reading ›The Day 6-Year-Old Sophia Learned to Dream Without Limits
The world that 6-year-old Sophia sees around her is one of poverty and limitations. But Compassion’s photojournalist in Brazil, Sara Navarro, is among the caring adults who inspire her to dream without limits. Here’s Sara’s story of the day she visited Sophia.
Continue Reading ›
What Happens When a Child Isn’t Sponsored?
When someone stops sponsoring a child, the Unsponsored Children’s fund fills the gap so that children can continue to receive support until a new sponsor is found. For 9-year-old Happy, this fund helped save her life.
Waiting … and Waiting for a Sponsor
Each child who got a sponsor would be so excited and proudly show their pictures and letters to the other kids. Rabbi kept waiting for that to be him. And he kept waiting and waiting as the line of kids who needed to be sponsored dwindled.
The Words We Carry
Your words are not just printed ink on paper. When I think of the cards I see a weapon that will be used by God. I see hundreds of hammers, in the shape of letters, shattering the lies of poverty. I see the grip of discouragement falling away from the children Jesus watches over.
A Christmas Card Drive of Epic Proportions!
We’d like to make a way to send hundreds and thousands of words of encouragement to kids who really need them in this season of Thanksgiving. That’s where YOU come in! Well you, DaySpring, and Compassion International.
What Is Christmas Like for an Unsponsored Child?
“They wonder why they don’t get a letter or a card. Of course we explain the situation to them and tell them it’s because they don’t have a sponsor, but that’s not enough for a child. This is something that makes unsponsored kids feel very sad and even discouraged.” — Yovi de Racines, Secretary of Camino de Santidad Mission
Always Picked Last (Extreme Poverty Style)
Imagine a world where you grow up with a mommy and a daddy and live in a nice warm house with your family.
You have your own bed, and sleep each night with a full belly. You go to school, and in the afternoon you go to sports practice on a green grassy lawn that is safely guarded from speeding cars and other dangers.
Imagine a world where your toys are bought from Wal-Mart, and you get a new Christmas, Easter and birthday outfit every year.
That’s not very hard to imagine … is it? Most of us grew up in that setting — or one very similar.
The situation that is hard to truly grasp is living in the circumstances the children in our sponsorship program live in.
We’ve seen the pictures; some of us have had the chance to see poverty firsthand. The reality the children in our sponsorship program live in is mostly the opposite of ours.
While some children are blessed with both parents still living, many live with other family members or older siblings. They eat one meal a day *maybe*, and play with toys that they find in the trash dumps outside their wood-walled, tin-roofed, one-room shanty.
So imagine how it brightens a child’s day when he or she goes to the child development center and receives a letter from you — the sponsor.
Now imagine a child who doesn’t have a sponsor. When all the children receive letters at the center, one never comes for this child.
This child, Carlos from Colombia, was registered into the sponsorship program in April, 2008, and has never — I repeat NEVER — had a sponsor.
What questions do you think run through his head when he attends the center during letter-writing and receiving time? What would run through your mind?
“Wait!” You say. “Doesn’t the sponsorship program still provide Carlos everything he needs? He is registered, after all.”
Let me see if I can explain. (more…)
From the Outside Looking In
Back in May I published a photo and asked you to give it a caption. I also included a little context from the photographer.
“Along the wall outside the Compassion project, many children watched and waited while the other children played and sang. With hundreds and thousands of children needing the hope that Compassion brings, our hearts broke to see the ones that could not be helped. Hundreds more are waiting for their chance to be sponsored, to be given hope, to be shown the love of Christ.” — scfish7
Then recently, I received the following e-mail.
“I read the blog about the children who are registered who are able to sing and enjoy meals while the unregistered ones just stare at them, wishing they were one of them. I have a hard time imagining what this is like.
“Is it like there is a ‘Century Fence,’ so to speak, that separates these two groups, where the unregistered look in and feel sad as they watch the sponsored eat hot meals and be carefree?
“Does this make them feel more unloved?
“Is it appropriate to send a picture or have one on this Web site so I can see what you are talking about? I have a hard time understanding this and maybe a picture would help.”
What are your thoughts? What do the children on the outside looking in feel?
