Meeting your sponsored child will be one of the most memorable days of their life and indeed one of the most memorable days of yours.

• Compassion can arrange for you to meet with your sponsored child and will provide a trained facilitator to accompany you.

• Your visit will be at your child’s home and student centre, or at a convenient location depending on your travel plans and the location of your child’s home.

• Visits are generally between two and six hours long.

• You will need to arrange your own travel and accommodation whilst you are in the country where your child lives.

• You will be required to reimburse the country office for any expenses incurred during the day you visit your sponsored child.

Setting up a visit
Advice on visiting your sponsored child
Read stories from sponsors who have visited their child

Setting up a visit

• Sponsors must have been supporting a child for at least one year before a visit can be set up.

• We need at least six weeks notice in order to set up a visit.

• You need to provide us with your itinerary details and each person visiting must complete a child protection form. Once we receive this information we will contact the country office where your sponsored child lives and begin to set up your trip. You can download these forms and send them to us now if you are ready organise your visit.

• Each person visiting will also need to have a police check or a Criminal Records Bureau check. If you already have one, you should send us a photocopy of it. If not, you should see your local police station regarding this.

• If you have any questions please call 01932 836490 or

Download the sponsor visit forms

To view the PDF files you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available free from Adobe

Advice on visiting your sponsored child
Read stories from sponsors who have visited their child

Advice on visiting your sponsored child

When you meet your sponsored child, he or she is likely to be very shy at first. As the day wears on, your child will usually become more relaxed with you. Games are a great way to break the ice – try a game of football!

Don’t forget you will always have a Compassion member of staff with you who will be able to put the child at ease and help with translation. They will also be with you at all times for child protection reasons.

You will need to be culturally sensitive about the clothing that you wear. Avoid wearing short skirts, shorts or t-shirts with narrow straps.

• Just being with your sponsored child is a wonderful gift in itself so please take time to get to know the family and pray for any needs they have.

• Without meaning to you might overwhelm the child and their family, so please don’t bring too many gifts. It is good to bring practical gifts that the whole family can benefit from and not just toys. Ideas include: Footballs, colouring paper, pens, pencils, crayons, t-shirts, a blanket, socks, wind up torch/radio, clothes, shoes, books, hair ribbons/clips, a towel, a current picture of your family.

• Please do not give money to the family or promise anything when you are there. If the family do have specific needs that you would like to help with, then contact Compassion on your return and we can make suitable arrangements.

Setting up a visit
Advice on visiting your sponsored child
Read stories from sponsors who have visited their child

Read stories from sponsors who have visited their child

Meeting my little boy

I can only describe meeting Ricardo as one of the most amazing moments of my life. I was both nervous and excited at the prospect of meeting ‘my little boy’.

I decided I wanted to sponsor a child three years ago and Compassion made it easy. I chose to sponsor a child in South America, as I hoped that I would go there one day. So when I had the opportunity to join a mission team to South America, I decided to stay on to visit Ricardo and his family.

Meeting Ricardo’s family was a very humbling and incredibly emotional experience. Imagine my amazement when I learnt that his parents and older brother were spirit-filled, born again Christians and have been praying faithfully for me since I first began to sponsor Ricardo. It was amazing. His father recently had his leg amputated. All the family’s savings had been spent on this operation and subsequent painkillers. Ricardo’s father made beautiful guitars by hand and lived in the town six days a week to try and earn a little more money for his family.

The most amazing thing about this Compassion project, in a remote Ecuadorian village, is that they do so much on so very little money. It was truly overwhelming and I came away hugely impressed with Compassion and the impact they are having across the world. So many charities these days can be ‘faceless’; they take your money and you never really know what it is spent on. However, to see children and their families’ lives radically changed and experiencing God’s love in a very practical way was incredible. I felt very challenged by the fact that we have so much and they have so little, but they are so grateful to God for everything.

Sara Peachey

Visiting your sponsored child
Setting up a visit
Advice on visiting your sponsored child