Your Top 14 Questions About Writing to the Child You Sponsor, Answered

Have you ever wondered when and where the child you sponsor writes their letters to you? And maybe you wonder exactly what they'd like to read from you?

When you sponsor a child, you’re joining an amazing team of people who are invested in helping that child overcome the obstacles of poverty. You’re enabling them to gain better access to education, healthcare, nutritious meals, a safe place to play and the emotional support that comes from their local church. You also bless them with encouragement through your messages.

We’ve compiled 14 of your top questions into this handy guide. We’ll also walk you through how your precious words end up in the hands of the child you sponsor.

Follow the links for each section:

PART 1: WRITING WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE (CHILD YOU SPONSOR)

PART 2: THE JOURNEY OF YOUR WORDS TO THE CHILD YOU SPONSOR

PART 3: WHEN YOUR MESSAGE ARRIVES AT THE LOCAL CHURCH

PART 4: YOUR SPONSORED CHILD’S LETTER JOURNEY BACK TO YOU

Rosa and her mother reading a sponsors letter

PART 1: WRITING WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE CHILD YOU SPONSOR

1)What should I write about?

Writing – either through our convenient app, your myCompassion page, or via a traditional letter – is a precious part of the journey when you sponsor a child. Many children keep all the letters they receive into adulthood.

But sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. We asked Gelnda, a Compassion tutor in Honduras for tips:

“First of all, don’t worry about whether your letter is too short! Sometimes, you may write only a three line paragraph, but it's still very important. Children love to hear about their sponsors’ daily activities, holidays, family events — and mostly about pets!

“Children know by heart their sponsor's name and the country they’re from. When the sponsors include photos that represent their country, that helps children to create a picture in their minds of the place where their sponsor lives.”

Find more great tips about how to write an encouragement here.

2) Should I write online or handwrite my letters?

Should I handwrite my letter or do it online

Using your myCompassion account or the new Compassion UK App is the quickest and most convenient way of sending encouragement to the child you sponsor. We can process these messages faster than a handwritten letter and at a lower cost. Our updated myCompassion site allows you to save drafts of your messages, and there are lovely letter and card designs for you to choose from.

If you still prefer to write by hand, that’s fine; the important thing is to send a message. Even a few lines make an incredible difference.

“We feel happy when our sponsor writes to us because it lets us know that they care about us and they also love us. I encourage those who don’t write to their children, I encourage them to write because they also want to feel special,” says 14-year-old Joan, from Uganda.

Get writing straight away by downloading our app or logging into myCompassion.

3) How do I send a handwritten letter?

If you’ve chosen to handwrite your letter, you’ll need to post it to our office. You can use one of our freepost envelopes or write the phrase ‘FREEPOST COMPASSION UK’ all in upper case on an envelope and post it to us with nothing else written on the envelope. This won't require a postage stamp.

PRO TIP: Before posting, make sure you’ve included yours and your child’s reference number at the top of your letter.

Once your letter arrives, the letter is opened, checked and scanned. This means we can send a high-quality digital copy straight to the country office where your sponsored child lives, which saves time shipping it internationally.

4) How can I help my message get to the child I sponsor as quickly as possible?

The fastest way to write to your child is to use our app or myCompassion.

If you’re handwriting a letter, one of the best ways to ensure it gets there ASAP is to use the stationery supplied by Compassion. If your letter is on personal stationery, or greeting card, with a handwritten child and sponsor reference numbers, it will be slightly delayed as our staff and volunteers will need to do some manual processing.

When you write, please leave the translation boxes blank and please be careful not to write over the perforation.

sorting sponsor letters

PART 2: THE JOURNEY OF YOUR WORDS TO THE CHILD YOU SPONSOR

5) Will someone translate what I write?

When we receive your messages of encouragement, they go through a series of processes. If English isn’t the official language spoken in the country the child you sponsor lives in, then your message will be translated by local staff.

As well as translation, every letter is checked to ensure it doesn’t contain anything inappropriate, like personal addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts or any words or phrases that could be culturally insensitive. This is to keep both you and the child you sponsor safe.

6) How does my message reach the child I sponsor?

Once your message has been sent to the national office in the country where the child lives, it's printed and packed with other messages for children who attend the same Compassion project. They’re grouped into clusters of about 12-14 Compassion projects situated close together before being put into a protective bag and sealed.

packing sponsor letters

A professional courier service picks up these packages from the country office and delivers them to the collation centres. Representatives from the individual church-driven project travel to collect the letters.

7) Why do my messages take a long time to arrive?

How often messages are collected from the collation centre depends on the volume of letters and how difficult it is to travel to pick them up. For some rural projects, collecting and dropping them off is an epic journey!

Typically, messages will be collected every month; however, some projects, like Dove Child Development Centre in Ghana, receive so many letters that this happens every week.

The journeys to collect these aren’t always easy.

delivering letters in Ghana

To get to her collation centre in Adidome from Dove, Lorlor travels for half an hour by motorbike to the nearest crossing for the River Volta.

After crossing the river by boat, Lorlor takes another 25-minute motorbike ride to reach Adidome. There, she meets Emmanuella, the collation officer, who has logged every message. Lorlor double-checks the log and signs it before Emmanuella hands over the packages to her.

Then Lorlor repeats her long journey all the way back to Dove, bearing her precious cargo.

delivering child letters

PART 3: WHEN YOUR MESSAGE ARRIVES AT THE LOCAL CHURCH

When your letter arrives at the Compassion project, your message is logged and a photocopy is taken to put in the folder of the child you sponsor. Many of the children will take these home to share with their family, so a copy is kept for when each child writes back.

8) Do children feel upset if they don’t receive a letter when others do?

Reading letters

While not every child receives a message with each collection, there's still great celebration. Esinam, the project director of Dove, explains:

“When children get letters, the whole community rejoices. Dove is a very small town, which is even unknown to some of the bigger surrounding towns. For someone from overseas to be thinking about a child in Dove and to write to that child; it's a very big thing.

“We thank the sponsors for their support and the gifts they send to these children. It's a life-changing opportunity.”

9) How many messages will I receive from the child I sponsor?

The child you sponsor will write to you twice a year, even if you don’t write back. We refer to these as scheduled messages.

Writing sponsor letter in Thailand

In addition to these, the child you sponsor will send reciprocal messages in response to the ones he or she receives from you.

If you were to write regularly, say once a week for two months, the child you sponsor would receive approximately eight messages during a 60-day period. This could be a little overwhelming to reply to them individually, so they'll respond to all the messages received during that time with a single message.

10) Does someone help the children write their messages?

When the children at the Compassion projects write letters to their sponsors, it’s often as part of a class activity, which enables staff to provide plenty of support.

Each child has a notebook where they draft their messages. This means they can look back and see what they wrote last time. For younger children, someone will sit with them and write on their behalf.

“Sometimes children get lost and don’t know what to write. When they feel unsure, we sit down with the children and pray together, and then we start discussing how to get their ideas flowing,” says Osiris, a tutor in Honduras.

11) Why do the messages I receive sound similar?

Writing isn’t always easy for children. In many countries, letter writing isn’t customary. You could be the first and only person the child you sponsor has ever written to! As Flor in Nicaragua explains:

“Nicaraguans are not used to receiving letters and we don’t send any, either. This is especially true for children who live in areas where they only go to elementary school, or their parents never went to school.”

So please be patient if the letters aren't as full of personality as you'd hope. As time goes on and they receive more messages from you, we hope that the child you sponsor will grow in confidence and start to share more.

Also, as the children grow into young adults, they’ll hopefully become better able to express themselves – your encouragement will go a long way in helping this happen.

12) Why aren’t my questions in my letter answered?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions and we understand your frustration.

It’s important to understand that the child you sponsor may struggle to imagine that anyone would be interested in the details of their life. You may need to be patient and encourage the child you sponsor that they matter, and you’re interested in all details.

You can also try underlining or highlighting your questions. The staff will copy down these questions and make sure that your children are able to answer them.

Part 4: Your sponsored child’s letter journey back to you

Once the child you sponsor has written their letter, it begins its journey back to the national office where it's translated into English and scanned.

13) How will I know I have a letter from the child I sponsor?

If we have an email address for you, you should receive an email with a digital copy as soon as the letter is uploaded to your myCompassion account. Unless you've opted for digital-only supporter experience, you'll also receive a paper copy in the post later on.

PRO TIP: To go digital-only, you can amend your preferences in your myCompassion account.

14) How often should I write back?

Alcha from Burkina Faso holding letters from her sponsor

Your words are treasured no matter how often you share them. However, because letter delivery happens at least once a month* at Compassion projects, we’d love to see sponsors aiming to write once a month.

This means that when letters are passed out to all the children, you get to put a smile on their faces because they know their friend cares for them!

Why not add a monthly reminder to your calendar to write your next letter?

We're so thankful for your heart for children, and for your generous commitment to the growth and well-being of the child you sponsor.

For some children, they’ve never had anyone tell them they're special, loved and being prayed for. By sending just a few words of encouragement you’ll have the most amazing impact.