A Common Concern

Several weeks ago our office in the U.S. passed along the following email from one of the families that sponsors a child here in Tanzania through the Children of Promise program. I include it here because I don't think it's an isolated concern.

"I don't intend to be cold or callous, but I'm wondering if the child we are sponsoring is even receiving our letters? When we do send messages, he does not respond to the questions we are asking him, which is causing our family to have doubts about whether or not he is even receiving anything? Is he getting our notes or the support that we are sending for him?"

I understand the sponsor's apprehension, and it was one that was echoed several times as we visited sponsors throughout the U.S. last year.  In fact I've been in the same situation as this supporter and many of our other sponsors. For a number of years we have been sponsoring a child through a similar child-sponsorship program. Often in the early years we would wait expectantly for new letters from our child to arrive. We'd look to see if she had answered our questions and hope for new information about her life. Sometimes we received it, and sometimes we got a letter very similar to one prior. And that could be quite discouraging. It's frustrating to wonder at times if there is any real relationship when your only communication comes from these simple letters.

As the in-country director of one of these programs now, I've seen first hand why this is often the case. Consequently, I think there are certain factors that play into it.

Before addressing the issues however, I would like to assure all of our sponsors that their children are receiving both the support and communication that they are sending. I've sat in the meetings in which your children are handed their letters and watched as children excitedly show off their contents to their friends and family. I've audited every receipt for the payments made for their schooling, healthcare, clothing, and food. I can say assuredly that your sponsored children's lives are being changed by your support and by the work of Children of Promise.

Now, onto addressing the matter at hand. While certain children (usually older students who have been in the program a long time) excel at writing letters and communicating with their sponsors, the reality is that a lot of our younger students struggle. Below are a couple of reasons that this is true.

1. For many of our kids, the letter that they write to their sponsors is the only letter they write all year. While Tanzania does have a postal service, it is reserved almost entirely for business communication, government issues, etc... Homes do not have mailboxes and families do not receive mail in that way. Quite simply, families rarely write letters to one another and almost never write letters at all. As such, it is a form of communication that is very foreign to our students. Again, pointedly, the sponsor letter is the only letter our children ever write.

2. Although children receive letters from their sponsors, rarely are they filled with the types of things that our children can really relate to and understand. Often times a child simply can't fathom the world in which their sponsor is living. Some of that is due to the age of our kids, but a lot is also due to the very different cultures each is inhabiting. So, in a lot of situations in which it appears that a child's letter doesn't match the tone, context, or questions that a sponsor sent, it's important to remember that quite literally that letter is coming from a different world.

3. A child's role in Tanzanian society is very much that of "seen and not heard." For many children living in large family groups their roles are very clear cut and defined. The family unit depends on them fulfilling their roles as not only students, but often times child care providers, farmers, servants, etc... As such, they don't often have a voice within the family until much later in life. To communicate deeply with an adult then, even among their own people, is quite foreign. Which may explain a lot of the reasons that children's letters are often curt and filled with simple descriptive sentences. They don't often open up to their own parents, let alone adults outside their family groups, and certainly never to a strange adult living on the other side of the world.

I think all of these issues help to explain why children's letters are often short, simple, and very uniform. At the same time I'd like to think that in most cases they develop to be deep and real conversations over the course of a sponsorship. That's certainly our goal. Over the last couple of years we've continued to look at ways of improving this, and I believe in reviewing the correspondence from our last few mailings, we've made some headway.

Let me assure you, we will continue to do all we can to improve communication between sponsors and their children. We recognize the value that these letters are to the program and the important connection they create between children and their supporters. We also acknowledge the impact your written words can have on the lives of our students. And we will most certainly continue to be accountable for the financial resources given by each of our sponsors and make sure that money sent for a child goes to that child.

But as a director now, as someone who watches countless lives grow up all around me, I've been given a little different perspective into all of this. Underneath it all, we see and we understand that a far more important form of communication continues to flow through everything we do. You may not feel it in the letters you receive, but I can assure you you're sending a deep and profound message to your child. At some point you held a picture of a child in your hands at a church or meeting. You made a decision to give that child hope by investing in their lives. And consequently a director on the other side of the world got to take that child's small hands in their own and tell them that they've been sponsored. In each of those moments, you spoke directly into the life of your child. And you communicated to them that their life matters, that hope is for everyone, and that God adores them.

Thank you for continued support of Children of Promise. If you have not yet gotten involved in changing the life of a child and would like to, please visit echildrenofpromise.org or contact our home office at  800-848-2464.