Nine Ways to Explore Your Sponsored Child's World Without Leaving Home

On the Our Compassion sponsor site I've seen wonder how to relate to their sponsored kids. It's true, we are insulated within our 21st-century first-world lifestyles, now. It wasn't so long ago, however, that our grandparents (or even parents!) were walking to and from the well to draw water, or were heating water over a wood stove for a bath, or were washing clothes in the river or going hungry because there were too many mouths to feed and drought killed the first harvest. The days of one-room schoolhouses with no heat or air aren't that far behind us. Grueling chores, farm work, carting produce to market, kids dropping out of school to support the family--that was the norm in rural American life not all that long ago. How quickly we forget!

I've found a few ways to feel more connected to my sponsored kids, and I wanted to share them here. I hope you'll use those you find intriguing to help forge a stronger connection with your sponsored kids. And, if you have the chance, be sure to sit down with the elderly members of your family and ask them what life was like when they were kids...chances are, you'll notice some similarities between their lives and those of the children you touch through your loving sponsorship.

1)  Google Earth - I love Google Earth. If you haven't ever played with it, it's a free download you can install on your computer that allows you to see satellite images on a round globe. You simply type in a location and hit "search" and the program will zoom in on your chosen location. I like to turn on the "photo" feature (on the left-hand sidebar), and find the town or city where my child lives. I explore the town through the photo feature, often looking at the location of the center they attend (you can find the location of your child's center on the OurCompassion website). It's a bit like visiting your child without the cost of a plane ticket! I have learned alot about the types of housing, the communities, the traffic, the vegetation, and the road systems of the kids we sponsor through my Google Earth "travels." In some areas, you can even fly over the city in 3D, with a "tour guide" to point out famous landmarks!

2) Read a Book - I adore the library. Where else can you walk in a room, pick out something you want, and walk out with it without paying a dime???  One of the best ways to understand our sponsored child's community, culture, and situation is to read. I love to read, so I devour books about India, Africa, and Central America at my house, as well as books about poverty, in general. There are many great books about poverty, about the horrible trafficking happening world-wide...and I encourage you to read those...but also take the time to read some less depressing information about the culture your child lives in. Travel guides are GREAT ways to explore the heritage sites in your child's country. If you have children, use these travel guides to make posters at home, printing photos from the internet, as though you've visited the country. Make a scrapbook of your "travels"! Lonely Planet guide to Bogota, Colombia: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/colombia/bogota

3) Cook a Meal - Food transcends language. You can relate to your child by learning about the foods they love and cooking those foods at home for your family. Try something new! Ask your child what their favorite food or snack is, and try to make it at your home....then tell your sponsored child what you thought about it! Take pictures of you trying it out! Your sponsored child will probably think it's funny that you tried their favorite meal. Recipes from Guatemala, where one of my sponsored children lives: http://www.food.com/recipes/guatemalan

Fried Plantains--common to Central America (and SO yummy)

4) Subscribe to the Compassion Explorer Magazine. I love this magazine. It is geared towards kids in elementary school, but I'm not ashamed to say that I like to read it just as much as kids that age do! It's FREE and each issue contains crafts, stories from the kids in various countries that are sponsored through Compassion, recipes, and other ideas for great ways to connect with your sponsored kids and kids of all ages!

5) Play a game. Does your sponsored child have a favorite game or hobby? Give it a try! This is especially great if you have kids or if you are college/high-school age. Drop the pretenses and get a group together to try a traditional Indian past time, or play soccer using a ball made from rags or plastic bags tied together with twine. Take photos and send them to your sponsored child! Some examples from India: http://www.ehow.com/list_6109478_india-games-kids.html

6) Listen to Music. Pandora is a great, free way to explore music from other cultures. Download Pandora to your computer or phone and type in your child's country. Music, like food, transcends language and speaks to the heart. Use that as a jumping off point to ask your sponsored child about their musical interests, and to share yours.

7) Visit the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) website. This somewhat well-hidden website is a treasure-trove of information about the countries Compassion works in. The site contains statistics about poverty and hunger, information about the natural resources of countries, rural and social development, and photos and other information, as well as publications. For example, here is a link to the FAO interactive Hunger Map: http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/.  Here is a link to the FAO country page for Togo, one of the African countries I sponsor in: http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index/en/?iso3=TGO, which contains not only statistics but also news feeds with information about events in the country.

8) Search the Library of Congress website. Another great resource for free information, free videos, free movies, photos, and much more!  Here is a link to the LOC World History & Cultures page: http://www.loc.gov/topics/worldhistory.php

9) Watch a travel documentary or youtube video! Travel documentaries abound, and there are even clips on youtube from many countries...Instead of the latest Dancing with the Stars, sit down to a travel documentary of your child's country! What a great way to visit without leaving your living room! Free online travel documentaries: http://documentarystorm.com/category/culture/travel/; Free Documentary on PBS about how our American cotton subsidies contribute to poverty in Burkina Faso, a Compassion country: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/310/

I hope these have given you some thoughts about interesting and unusual ways to be more in tune with your sponsored children and their cultures and lives!

Involving Young Children in Compassion International

Michelle over at Blogging From the Boonies has started a blog link-up this month about how to involve our kids in Compassion International. Sometimes with really young kids (mine is 2.5), it's really hard to know how to get started. In fact, sometimes it's just hard to get dressed and get breakfast on the table, much less try to do something for someone else in a meaningful way that touches the heart of your child.

Children seem to be easily and naturally compassionate, to me, and capable of understanding more that we give credit for. They also have a "can-do" spirit that means they aren't afraid to give things a try. It's a great time to get kids involved!

With my young son, I mostly try to impart a sense of cultural diversity to him by giving him the chance to try new things. Compassion makes this SO easy by providing the free printable (and hard copy) Explorer magazine. Though it is really targeted at older kids, my son still gets a lot out of the activities and pictures. We take the magazine and look through it, and pick out one or two things we'd like to try.

In one issue there were instructions for making a homemade soccer ball out of plastic bags and twine. We did, and my son still plays with it months later! We have practiced carrying plastic produce in baskets on our heads, and two days ago we pulled out our Explorer magazine and made a featured cake, Tres Leches, together. We listened to Mariachi music and ate nachos and talked about our Compassion child in Guatemala (okay, so the article in the magazine was about Mexico, but it was as close as we could get).

Besides the magazine, we also pray daily for our Compassion kids at dinner time as a family, and we have the pictures of our kids hanging at eye level for our son, so that he can see who they are. We read their letters to him, and he draws pictures for us to send them on occasion. I also ordered him a special shirt from the Compassion store, and involve him in my advocacy efforts.

In an attempt to come up with another way to involve him in correspondence, I developed some Sponsor Writing Templates for very young children--you can see them here:Letter Writing Templates for Young Children

I am committed to teaching my son the value of compassion for others, and I hope that by doing so I will foster a sense of social responsibility--and have fun in the meantime!!

A Free Way to Help Others

This week I learned through two different sources about a very interesting social lending program (for lack of a better word) that I thought I would share. Kiva Microfunds is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that connects lending from people via the internet with entrepreneurs in developing countries via partner institutions (referred to as "field partners" on Kiva's website). Kiva operates based on grants, loans, and donations and does not collect any interest on the loans it facilitates, though their field partners do collect interest. The organization is headquartered in California.

Basically, the way it works is that you--the lender--visit the Kiva.org website and browse the qualified entrepreneurs. Each entrepreneur has a profile and photograph, along with descriptions of the work they are trying to perform (which can range from personal needs like fixing their home to professional needs like restocking their inventory) and the loan amount they are requesting. Lenders can choose to lend as little as $25 to an entrepreneur. Over time, multiple lenders finance 100% of the loan. As loan capital comes in, the funds are transferred to the field partners who disburse the money to the appropriate entrepreneurs. As loans are repaid, the lenders may choose to withdraw their money or re-lend to another entrepreneur. You (the lender) to not make any interest money, but you can reinvest the original amount of your loan. All of this is done via the internet using PayPal.

The first time you loan via Kiva, you can do so with someone else's money. Wait, what???  That's right, every person who wishes to see how Kiva works can sign in and donate $25 of someone else's money (typically an anonymous donor) to an entrepreneur as a free trial to see how the process works. If you are referred by someone (say, like me!) the referring party ALSO gets a free $25 to lend... So, for example, let's say 5 people read this blog and go lend their free $25...  that means that the total lended amount is $100 and if they use my referral link, I also get $100 so we will have lent $200----ALL FOR FREE TO US. If one or more of us chooses a "double impact loan" (another anonymous donor has pledged to match the funds) then we can make that amount go even further.  It's really an amazing concept in microfinance.

Kiva, like Compassion, has a 4-star rating by Charity Navigator. Ninety-eight percent of loans are repaid, making it fairly low risk. It's a great way to make your money go a long way towards helping others, and it's not a hand out--it's a way to help people work hard towards bettering their lives!

I learned about Kiva on OurCompassion.com and through reading the phenomenal book "Half the Sky" (which I think every single man and woman in the developed world should be reading). So Check Kiva Out! Be sure to use my referral link so that we can make our dollars go further!!

Oh, and don't forget to visit my ETSY store, Conspiracy of Love!  I add new things every day and 100 percent of your purchase price benefits Compassion International Child Survival Programs!!!  

A Balancing Act

Yesterday I received my second-ever letter from one of my Compassion Kids, this time our correspondence child Florance, who is from India. I was so excited to read her letter and discover that her favorite colors are pink and black, and that she can read and write in English (wow, that makes corresponding so much easier for me, and opens up worlds of possibilities for sharing with her!)

In the same bunch of mail, I also received information about the country of Togo from the Compassion office in Colorado. I love getting these bulletins because it makes it so easy for me to share with my son how other people live. You may recall in one of my earlier posts when we read the bulletin about Burkina Faso, and Michael was a bit taken aback by the houses they live in.

Well, in this bulletin, Michael was very impressed with the way women and children carry vegetables and other goods to and from market--on their heads! After reading the bulletin, we decided we'd try it out and see if we could "make it" in Togo with our sponsored child, Marcelle. We dug a large plastic mixing bowl out of the cabinet and took turns trying to balance it. Michael was getting discouraged until I showed him a photo from the bulletin of a young child who had his basket on his head, but was using one arm to help balance it.

"It takes a lot of practice to learn to balance produce on your head," I told him (not something I really thought I'd ever be saying to my son...). Well, he really took to it, then, making trips to the "market" in the living room where his play kitchen and vegetables are kept and carrying them on his head back to me to "cook."

When we finished "cooking" our vegetables we looked at the photos of the wells the Togolese people were collecting water from, and Michael asked what they were. I explained that not long ago at all people in the United States were getting most of our water from wells, and it was just fairly recently that we had running water in our homes. In fact, my husband and I had well water at a home we lived at about 7 years ago (though it was pumped to the house, we didn't trek miles with it balanced on our heads).

Michael found that fascinating, and he enjoyed pretending to pull water from the well, balance it in his bowl, and share drinking from the bowl with me.

It's amazing how much a small child can learn from a 4 page bulletin about another country when there is a connection with that country. Knowing that we have a friend in Togo that we pray for nightly by name, and that we talk about during the day makes the world seem accessible and interesting to him.

It makes me think, if my 2.5 year old can feel that way about a child from another country, imagine how my sponsored kids feel about our family. We are a current of information and encouragement to them, and we are making the world an accessible and interesting place for them, just like they are for us! What an amazing reciprocal relationship.

I would encourage any family with children (or without!) to sponsor a child, not just for the sake of lifting up a child in poverty and introducing them to the love of Christ, but also for the sake of sharing the joys and sorrows of other cultures with your own children. There is nothing more satisfying to me as a mother than seeing my own child exhibit compassion towards others. I am grateful to Compassion and to my sponsored children for giving me the opportunity to share this experience with my son and husband!