We sponsored a little girl from the phillipines a month or so back.. Sent her first letter last week.. I was wondering if anyone sends extras to their kids and if so where do you come up with ideas on what to send.. As I understand it, all items have to be paper and not considered valuable. I really want to send Allyah a special envelope once a month.. I was thinking about printing out paper dolls on cardstock and sending that.. Also thought about getting a stuffed animal and hanging her picture around the neck and taking "her" places with us and sending pictures of my family with the anial doing different things like playing at the park or just while we are doing our school work.. Any ideas anyone would like to share??? Thanks Forgot to mention that Allyah is 6.. If that helps any.. Angela
Typically, we send stickers of various sorts, anything that can fit in an envelope. On one occasion, I had the privilege of meeting a child we sponsor. I was on a business trip to India and had to visit Bangalore at one day's notice - and the child lived in that area. I contacted the local project and they arranged for the child to be taken out of school. At the airport, I hired a car and driver for the day, gave the driver a handful of rupees, and asked him to buy a cricket bat while I attended my business meeting. An hour later, there was the driver - smiling and holding a bat. Why do I say all this? Because, when I gave the boy his bat, I realized that he had no ball. Instead, he started to play cricket excitedly with rocks. This was a sobering lesson to me: It's so easy to forget that these children have virtually nothing - so simple gifts can be much better than what we view as more valuable ones.
WOW!! Thanks for sharing your story.. It's easy to forget that others don't have the luxuries that we have..
I would LOVE to sponsor a child! I have read on the website all of their guidelines, and I would send stickers, pocket picture books, pictures of our family so they knew what we looked like. Paper dolls is a great idea! What about little handmade felt finger puppets? I think they just have to fit inside an envelope, right?
Yup, you've got it. The kids are really blessed by our letters, and even a simple coloring page or photo is great! I was able to visit my compassion sponsor child in Peru. It was amazing how much the kids really were blessed by the letters. They have a magazine for kids too. It has activities and info about poverty - some country specific info.
We have two kids. Our younger one we send stickers, pictures the kids have colored for her, coloring sheets, and photographs. On their birthdays, we send an extra cash gift and they use it for things they need. Our little girl was able to buy a new shirt and skirt and was SOOO happy Our other is a teen-aged boy, so he's a little harder to send little things for. I try to send him post cards of things in the area so he can visualize where we live a little better. When we went to the Corn Maize, I sent pictures of us making our way through as well as a post card showing the aerial view of the Maize. I love Compassion!
When I sponsored a little girl, I sent pictures of places I'd gone, neat stickers [back then, the puffy kinds with google eyes were really popular], coloring sheets, etc. I think the paper dolls would be very cool. You might check out Canon's Creative Park site: http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/1006/ They have tons of fun paper crafts you could print off. Maybe you could send some sheets of glue dots to go with them.
Agree with Steve-I reader several blogs where the writers sponsor kids and blog about Compassion often-many have even taken trips to meet their kids. The thing is, anything you send them will be valuable to them. It's not the money you send each month that these kids look forward to, it's letters from you! The money is quite handy, no doubt, but the kids, they want the letters, the relationship. I've read stories and seen videos some of thebloggers took, and there are kids that are sponsered that their sponsors don't write to them and it makes the kids feel really bad, they will keep and treasure every one of your letters, even if you dont' send anything. Keep an eye ont he site as the guidelines will change from time to time based on what does and doesn't make it through. The compassion bloggers often have great posts with some awesome ideas of items you can send. http://compassionbloggers.com/bloggers
There are some great paper toys at thetoymaker dot com. My dd8 sent a beautiful flapping butterfly to her pen pal for valentine's day. Some fun paper doll scans can be found by googling teri's paper dolls. ~Kimberly
We sent our sponsered girls letters, photos of us and where we live/play/worship, beautiful cards and scenic postcards of New Zealand. The younger girl was always drawing flowers so we sent her a lot of things with flowers on them. For special occassions we sent small beads and elastic and coloured cotton so they could make jewelry, or ribbons and clips for their hair. These kids have nothing compared to us and these simple things are a blessing to them. Not all children in their community are sponsered so things they can share are really good.
