Your session will time out at [00:00]. If you would like to sponsor [Child Name], please complete your transaction as soon as possible.Unfortunately your session timed out at [00:00] and since that time [Child Name] was sponsored by another person. Please visit the Sponsor a Child page to find another child.
Children and families receive no cash. Benefits are only ever in the form of goods and services, carefully designed, delivered or purchased according to their needs.
Note: Child and family gifts (donations) are allocated exclusively to the child / family you are supporting. The Compassion centre staff will involve the family in purchasing gifts that are appropriate and meet specific needs.
If you are interested in learning more about how Compassion Canada handles finances, click here.
No less than eighty percent of your donation will be directed to Compassion’s Response programs. No more than 20 percent is used for fundraising initiatives and administration. Compassion assisted children and their families receive no cash. Benefits are always in the form of goods and services, carefully designed, delivered and purchased according to the children’s individual needs. We encourage you to check out our financial statement for more details.
Many sponsors have requested that opportunity. For years, we have discouraged such efforts due to the potential abuses of personal information (i.e. addresses) exchanged outside of a monitored relationship between a sponsor and a child. The potential for abuse is real. But, so is the potential for healthy communication between a motivated sponsor and a young person who is launching into adulthood. We encourage you to pray about your decision and then contact our office. You will need to sign a release form, and include it with a final letter to your sponsored child.
Our three distinctives make us who we are: We are Christ-centred, child-focused and church-based. We partner exclusively with local churches to implement our programs, because we believe the Church is the most effective in reaching its neighbours. Our holistic child development program is focused on developing children in every aspect of life—physical, social-emotional, cognitive and spiritual. And we do it all in Jesus’ name! We believe that transformed people will transform families, communities and nations, which is why we give children the opportunity to be rooted in Christian community at a local church, where they experience God’s transforming love and have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Learn more about what makes Compassion different from other organizations.
Donations to the Christmas Gift Fund will appear in the “My Giving” section of My Compassion as your contribution is not specifically designated to your sponsored child. We’re considering adding gift descriptions to help you better identify how your gifts were used in future updates to My Compassion.
Looks can be deceiving. The photographs do not show the conditions in which these children live or the hunger and abuse many experience. Compassion believes in maintaining the dignity of the poor. For this reason, as much as we are able, we try to ensure the children are photographed in clean clothes.
Learn more about why your sponsor child may not “look poor”.
Child sponsorship provides a holistic development program for children in Compassion’s ministry. But at times there are other factors that can have a significant impact on a child’s life. This additional $10 donation to the Urgent Needs Fund helps to address those unforeseen circumstances.
This donation does not go directly to your sponsored child, but is available to help all sponsored children and their families around the world as needed. This could include—but is not limited to—emergency medical care, disaster relief and reconstruction, income-generation training and other critical interventions. These initiatives combine with the benefits of child sponsorship to break the cycle of poverty.
Communication within many of the countries where we work can be extremely slow. All letters to and from the children can take two to four months to arrive. They are couriered to the Compassion office in each country where they are translated. As projects are often very remote, the head office will wait until they have received a reasonable number of letters before they are delivered to a particular project. A member of staff will then hand deliver them as mail systems can be very erratic and unreliable. Many sponsored children do not have a postal address in the way that we do in Canada. Please be assured that we will do our best to make sure that your letter will arrive as soon as possible. The exchange of letters is a crucial element of sponsorship and it is an area we are constantly working to improve.
Absolutely! Please email us at info@compassion.ca or call us at 1-800-563-5437. Tax receipts are also available for you to download in your My Compassion account. For each year, tax receipts are issued no later than February 28th of the following year.
Online – you can submit a photo through the letter section of your My Compassion account. Just above the box where you can type out your letter to your sponsored child, there is an “Upload a Photo” button. Use it to select the photo to add to your letter. Once you are ready to send the letter, click on the “Send Letter” button
Printed Photos – If you want to send in a physical copy of a photo, simply include it in the mail with your next written letter. It is helpful if you can write your supporter number and the child’s name and number on the back of the photo. Please do not include any photo descriptions as these will not be submitted for translation.
Your privacy is important to us, which is why My Compassion is subject to a very high level of security and operates under the same security principles that apply to online banking. My Compassion uses secure and encrypted communications between your web browser and our servers. When using My Compassion, you should see a yellow or green security padlock or a blue tab indicating the name of the site’s security certificate. These indicators are your assurance that My Compassion is running in a secure environment, and may appear differently depending on which web browser you use.
Please do not respond. While communication via social media might seem to save time and money, the risks this channel presents overshadow the potential benefits.
Compassion does want you to have the best relationship possible with your sponsored child, but we cannot guarantee everyone’s safety if we are not aware of what’s being communicated. While we trust that those who sponsor with Compassion are doing so out of a love for Christ, we have an obligation to protect the children in our care from sponsors who may not have the child’s best interests in mind. Because of this, we must be aware of what’s being communicated to ensure the child’s well-being.
Here are some additional factors we’ve considering when creating our letter only communication guideline:
It’s not uncommon for someone who knows a child is sponsored to create an account on a social network and posing as that child, contact his or her sponsor asking for money. In this situation, the child may be facing the threat of physical harm if the money is not provided.
We cannot protect your privacy or your sponsored child’s if we are not involved in the correspondence.
By serving as the conduit for communication between you and your sponsored child, we are able to watch for any content that may be inappropriate or culturally insensitive – no matter how well intentioned or innocent a comment may be.
Should you receive a friend request or a message from anyone claiming to be your sponsored child on Facebook or another social network or through any medium other than your letters from Compassion, please do not respond but rather contact us immediately at info@compassion.ca or 1-800-563-5437.
Children don’t necessarily write back to you on the same day that they get your stickers. Instead, they reply on a scheduled day when all the children at the project write to their sponsors. They may be writing back some weeks or even a month after they receive your letter, so may not remember whether they have already acknowledged what you have sent them. Please remember that each letter may take up to two months for translation and delivery. Please check the date of your child’s letter to work out whether he or she would have received your stickers before they last wrote back to you. Compassion is working on a process to ensure that every child acknowledges every piece of mail they receive from their sponsor. If you are in doubt whether your sponsored child has received your mail, you are welcome to write and ask.
Children don’t necessarily write back to you on the same day that they receive your letter. Instead, they reply on a scheduled day when all the children at the project write to their sponsors. Your sponsored child may have proudly taken your letter home to share with family & friends and may not have it handy to remind them of the questions you answered. Please remember that it can take up to two months for your letter to be translated (if needed) and delivered. Please check the date of your sponsored child’s letter so you can work out whether he or she would have received your questions before they last wrote. In some cultures children are rarely asked about what they think and do, which may explain why your child doesn’t always answer your questions, or has difficulty expressing an answer. Compassion is working on a program to ensure that questions are recorded by project staff, so they can ensure that the children answer them. You can help in this process by underlining or highlighting your questions in your letter and making them easy to understand.
It is possible to send financial gifts to your sponsored child, however, these gift funds are to be allocated to the child’s greatest need as determined by local staff and the child’s family. Depending on the gift amount and the family needs at the time the gift is received, the gift could be allocated to further education opportunities for your child or another pressing family need.
Child and family gifts can be sent once per calendar year. To learn more, please check out the gift section of your My Compassion accountor connect with our office directly.
Sponsorship plus Urgent Needs provides funds for additional benefits for sponsored children, their families and communities that cannot be provided by child sponsorship funds alone. While sponsorship funds provide activities which directly benefit your sponsored child, the extra $10 from Sponsorship plus Urgent needs is used to fund initiatives and programs which sow further into the lives of Compassion assisted children, their families and communities.
As Compassion raises more funds for these activities, we will be able to assist more sponsored children with these additional benefits.
Some of these include:
Emergency medical care
HIV and AIDS Initiative – includes education on prevention as well as care
Education and training programs for parents of sponsored children
Partner church development – including church partner staff training
You can view past and upcoming gifts to your child through your My Compassionaccount. If you do not have a gift set up, you can request this through the gift page on My Compassion or you cancontact our officedirectly.
Yes. Writing online means your letter bypasses our local postal service and will already be in digital format so we can forward it directly to the Country Office. From there, Compassion staff translate, print and deliver the letters (and photos, if included) to your child.
Compassion aims to reach as many families as possible. Typically, only one child from a family will attend a project. The parents will choose which child is registered. However, if the family has great needs up to three children may be enrolled. The benefits of the program reach the whole family through interaction with staff, health screening, nutritional advice and supplies, parenting workshops and other church activities. Sponsored children often share what they learn at the Compassion project with siblings and many lead their entire families to Christ. As well as supporting your sponsored child and their family through prayer, as a sponsor you are able to send financial gifts to your sponsored child’s family.
