Christmas All Year Community

I have been sponsoring a girl named Selena Maribel Lopez Padilla (an 11 year old girl from Ecuador) through World Vision for a little over two years. If sponsoring is not for you then perhaps you could take a look at the World Vision x-mas catalogue. It should be coming out sometime soon. This catalogue contains things that you can give to a needy community. Things like goats, seeds, toys, clothes, etc can be purchased online.

Maybe World Vision is not for you, but I thought I'd mention it.

Thanks for the post Christmas_Eggnog. Although I'm not familar with this organization it sounds very similar to the Heifer International group. Very worthy causes.

We sponsor a child through Compassion International. In the past (before children) we sponsored one through World Vision.

A few years ago, one of my kids' teachers asked for donations towards the World Vision catalogue instead of Christmas presents. She read them a story about giving (can't remember the book title now). Almost all the students brought in donations. She collected a fair bit of money, much more than would have been spent on her teacher presents, plus she got a couple of presents too. She was able to buy some chickens, a goat, and some rabbits if I remember correctly.

Wow, everyone on here is very generous.....I had wanted to sponsor a child via Compassion International, but it was one of World Vision's commercial things that won me over.

I'm curious, are/did any of you write to your sponsored child? I have but was a tad surprised with the letters I recieved back. It took a few years before I realized that there was an error and I wasn't recieving any annual reports....

Aw, Noel....I really see what you mean. I have stopped sending letters now because I find most of mine get misplaced/lost anyways....I think I'll be content just knowing that Selena is getting help.

Hm...so is Compassion International less on advertising? I know my mom and I arn't too happy with all of the mail we get asking for additional money (although they are towards very needy causes) and stuff like that. My mom says she still wants to sponsor a child but is a tad unhappy with how World Vision seems to be constantly advertising...

I don't notice that we get more advertising. If a major crisis happens and they are in that area we might see a letter come, but usually nothing. They do have a magazine which comes out about 4 times a year to keep you updated as to what is happening. So I suppose that would be much less. I don't find we are hounded to give money that's for sure.

We had the idea at our local church to gather as many people as possible to pay a small amount and sponsor a child . Fifteen years on we have sponsored many children ,2 at a time and now have 2 girls one in India and one in Malawi . I collect 5 euros from each person every two months as there are around 25 who joined up . Its the price of a cup of coffee here but look at the difference it makes to their lives .