Compassion International

We went on this trip through Compassion International. If you haven't heard of the organization, you should look it up and consider sponsoring a child. What they are doing for the children and families around the world is absolutely worth every penny. They are making a difference that is hard to fathom from here but absolutely necessary to those who are receiving it. The trip was an amazing way to really understand and see first hand what is happening on the other side of the world. It was also great to see that groups like Compassion are being the hands and feet of Christ.

This is their Mission Statement: In response to the Great Commission, Compassion International exists as an advocate for children, to release them from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible and fulfilled Christian adults.

Compassion starts project sites at well established churches. There is always a church affiliated with a project. The church will help by providing volunteers and space for the project to run.

Each project has four paid workers. A program director who plans activities, makes home visits, and runs the program. A social worker translates letters for the children, buys the children's gifts, supplies, clothes, and other basic necessities with the sponsor's monthly donations, makes home visits, and usually does the physical games with the kids. An accountant helps keep track of paperwork and teaches sunday school. All the children have very detailed files with every letter, health check up, and purchase made for that child. There is a lot of accountability in place to ensure the program runs smoothly. A medical worker gives twice yearly check ups, makes home visits, and deals with any medical issues a child may have.

Sites are all run differently as to what kind of activities are offered for the children. All will have sunday school programs and a once a week program that children must attend but that is usually the only constant throughout the programs. They may offer parent classes, after school tutoring, sports clubs, after school care, or additional schooling.

Most sites have between 200 and 250 children. While many of them are sponsored, there are always children who are waiting for a sponsor. They still get to come to the site's activities and receive the attention of the staff but they don't have the monthly support and gifts like the other children. The support of a sponsor basically takes the financial burden of raising that child off the parents. The child can attend school, be clothed, and fed all for $38 a month. A special Christmas gift would probably be used to help the family with a larger need but usually all the support goes straight to the child. Most of the parents have little to no income but it isn't because they aren't trying. On one of our home visits, we saw the mother down on the street below their house selling a few wares for basically pennies. She was an older woman who was taking care of her own daughter and her niece by herself. Without the support of a Compassion sponsor, it is hard to imagine what might happen to them.

Over 50% of the Ethiopian population are of the Orthodox faith. This means that while the children are going to Sunday School it is more than likely their families are not christians. It is the hope and prayer that many children and entire families will come to find Christ but it not the primary focus of Compassion's ministry.

The letters that are written to the children are very important and special. The children see their sponsors and heroes even halfway across the world. They wait anxiously for the letters and it most definitely hurts when the staff passes out letters and a child doesn't get one. All the letters first go to Colorado Springs and are then sorted by country. There is a head office in every country that receives all the letters for their country. The letters are opened and sorted by project site. In Ethiopia alone, there are over 300 sites. Once a week, someone from the site must drive to Addis and pick up their letters. Then, they take them back to the projects to translate and hand out to the children. The child write letters once every three months. They are than sent to the country office and translated. From there, they are mailed back to Colorado Springs and out to the sponsors. Most of the sponsors are from the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK.

There are many different programs within Compassion. There is child sponsorship which we saw the direct affect of However, there is also a leadership program that helps put young adults through college. Both of our translators were sponsored children who then went through the LDP program and came back to work at Compassion. Compassion also offers a child survival program for pregnant and new mothers. We were only told about this so I'm not sure of many of the details but you can look at Compassion's website if you want to know more about it. What you really need to know is that it goes beyond just giving a few children clothes to wear. It gives a child hope and a future from the very beginning to adulthood.

I hope I was able to give you a pretty clear picture of the people and program that I worked with for the last 9 days. We were the first groups to visit both projects. The projects have names that are affiliated with the churches but usually just identified by their numbers so I'll probably refer to them at ET 566 and ET 565 because that is the easiest thing to call them. Both projects had been up and running less than two years. Our presence there was fun for the children but a huge encouragement to the adults and staff members. However, I think that will be another blog post entirely.

Here is one of the games that the children taught us to play at the project site.