Pluses and Minuses of Sponsorship

I received this cool photo of Anjali today. Her birthday is in September and I had sent a check as a gift. She writes that she bought "two frocks" and that she likes yellow and white.

It's strange to realize that I have been sponsoring this little Indian (from India) girl for nearly three years. Two and a half years, actually.

What is odder, I guess, is that of the kids I either sponsor or write to because their sponsors don't, she is one of the kids that I know the least.

Writing is obviously not her strong suit. At first I attributed it to her age, but she's 11 now so that should not be the problem.

I think part of it has to do with the person who translates her letters, who writes as if she were transcribing an interview. I think every letter I have received from her has been pretty much the same. And every sentence begins with "She says..."

Nonetheless, the purpose of sponsoring a child is not to make me happy, but to help better that child's life.

For a relationship with sponsored children, I have Fred and Shallon, both of whom are not children for whom I contribute money, but children to whom I write. Fred doesn't write his letters, but his mother writes long newsy letters and we have as much of a dialog going as you can get when it takes 3 months for each of us to get the other's letter. It also helps that Lydia (Fred's mother) writes in fluent English.

Shallon, from Uganda, is also someone with whom I am beginning to make a deeper relationship. She also writes in English, so the letters don't have to go through a translator. She writes very long letters and our corrrespondence begins to sound like...well...a correspondence.

Pablo, from Brasil writes rarely. His letters are fun, but I almost never hear from him. He's a Brasilian boy. No surprise here! I have dealt with Brasilian males for a very long time.

And I also almost never hear from Briana. But she is in Haiti and I don't even want to think about the problems that groups helping children are going through in Haiti. Fortunately, Briana is in the north of Haiti, which seems to have escaped earthquake, hurricane and cholera problems, but I think that letters go through the main office Port au Prince, which is ground zero for all of the social and health problems in that country, so I'm just happy if anything arrives.

And then there is Esther, from Indonesia. She's kind of half-and-half about writing, but I don't yet have a feel for her, as she was the last of the children to be added to my correspondence roster.

A disappointment is Clarisse, from Rwanda, whom I am sponsoring through Women to Women. I was under the impression that I would hear something from her so I would know something about her, but it's been months and emails to the group have been yielded nothing. I have no concerns about where my funds are being spent. I believe Women to Women is a reputable organization, but I've been disappointed.

Again, the purpose was not to make me feel good, but to provide support to women who have been affected by war in their countries so that they can move forward and be able to live independently and support themselves and their families. I continue to write what I hope are supportive messages to her, but I am disappointed that it seems like I am writing to a brick wall. When my period of support for her ends, I may use that money to support another child at Compassion, Intl.

Nshuti Yange, Clarisse*

I have heard from Women for Women International and learn that I have been matched with a 34 year old woman named Clarisse Niyonsaba, who lives in Rwanda.

I don't have a lot of information about Clarisse yet. The package says that I will receive more information when she attends her first class. But I do know that she is married and raising five children. I do not know if these are all her children, since the information I received says that "many women adopt as many as 6 orphaned children, treating every child like her own."

Apparently this is a sponsorship which lasts one year. Clarisse will join a group of 25 women who will become her support network as they "go through an intensive and life-changing training."

The letter goes on to state that "Clarisse will learn about women's rights, allowing her to take greater control over the decisions that govern her life and that of her children; she will learn technical and business skills that will allow her to sustain an income; she will receive direct cash assistance and emotional suppolrt, and on graduating (in September of 2011) she will be given access to jobs or tools to start a business."

I think my first choice of match was in Congo, because of my friends from Congo, but I have felt such irrational guilt about Rwanda since seeing Hotel Rwanda and learning more about the genocide in 1994, so I'm more than happy with a match with Clarisse. More than 800,000 people were murdered and 2 million were displaced in Rwanda.

Up to 500,000 women and girls were raped and tortured.

After the genocide Rwanda's population was 70% female.

Women for Women provides job skills training, health eduction and rights awareness classes to help these women succeed and give themselves and their families a hope for a better future.

I hope to get to know Clarisse better over the coming year and I hope that this sponsorship may help a little toward making her life a little better. It seems so little to do, but a little is more than nothing.

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*Dear Clarisse

Hey, Mr. Postman

Monday is turning into letter-writing day for me, at least many Mondays it is. Sometimes it's every other Monday.

On Monday, I try to get out some sort of letter to the Compassion kids. Sometimes it's an e-mail, which is nice but kind of boring. When I get into it, it's a letter and a little gift to go along with it, and probably a photo. There are all sorts of ways to get creative, but you are limited to something made of paper and not thicker than 1/4". I've found that things like stickers, and page from coloring books, post cards, and a few other creative things I've found help make it possible to send each child something each time.

Then there are the letters themselves. On Mondays when I'm feeling creative, I write a separate letter for each child. Other Mondays, I write a generic letter that can be sent to each of the six children. That's what I did today. With school starting, I wrote a description of my grammar school and the walk to get there and what the building was like. Then I just copied that same letter for each child.

They all got something different, though. Fred got some pages from a book I bought awhile ago called "Prayers for Boys." It has very cute pictures and though I'm not big on the religion stuff, they are and I know they will like it. To Pedro, who is older, and Brasilian, I sent a package of socceer stickers. Anjali in India got a little gift bag (the kind you put gifts in) that I removed the handle from (since the rope-y material wouldn't go) and I put a couple of stickers inside the bag. I sent Shallon in Uganda some pages from an activity book. She can read and write English, and I knew she could understand the instructions. Briana from Haiti got some stickers from a book of fairy stickers and Esther from Indonesia got a pad of note paper with a smiley face on it and "God Loves You."

With all of the sponsored kids taken care of, I also wrote a letter to Bri on paper that I decorated with stickers and put it inside a blank Mickey Mouse card, I'm writing in larger letters so that when she starts to read, it will be easier for her. I wonder if she can understand "BRI" yet....

Finally there were post cards. I joined something called "Postcrossing," where you send postcards to others who have signed up for the program. It doesn't start any sort of dialog at all, since they don't have your address so can't respond, but I'll see how it goes. I've already heard from someone from Facebook who has been doing this for many years. I hope to confer with her and find out what her experience has been like.

I took all my goodies to the post office, bought stamps, stopped to buy post cards (you only get 5 addresses at a time, but I decided to send out all 5) and then came home to check Facebook, whereupon I saw an ad for Women to Women International. I'd heard good things about the group before, but this particular ad tugged at my heartstrings because they were asking for help for women of the Democratic Republic of Congo, women who have been devastated by rape and AIDS and who have lost all hope.

My heart went out to these women, especially because we have friends from Congo, now living in the United States. and I remember their horrible tales of persecution, and how desperate they were to get their families to this country to prevent their torture and/or execution.

I could not turn my back on a request for help for the women of Congo, so I immediately applied to become a "sister" to one of the women from Congo (my second and third choices being Rwanda and Afghanistan, if there is no woman in Congo who is in need right now). The commitment is a monthly stipend (of course) and letters to be written to my "sister," when she is assigned to me.

I realized that my monetary sponsorship commitment was getting up there so I thought about where I could cut back. I ended my Audible.com subscription. Now that I have all of the big-ticket Diana Gabaldon books, to buy a regular book is not all that much more than to pay the monthly fee, and I have a huge backlog before I will need to buy another audio book.

And I also ended my membership in Ancestry.com. While I enjoyed finding out about some of my father's relatives, the amount of time I have available to spend researching genealogy there does not justify the monthly cost and, frankly, the cost will just about cover my Woman to Woman sponsorship.

I dare either of those organizations (Audible or Ancestry) to try to talk me into keeping my membership, when I put forth such an eloquent case for what I was going to do with the money instead!

I won't know about my sponsored "sister" for about a month, but she will then go into the Monday letter writing queue. At least those letters, with imbedded photos, can be sent by e-mail and I won't have to go to the post office and buy stamps for them!