Task: Childreach

Going through the mail that arrived while I was on vacation, I had a bit of a shock. Sophie has graduated.

Sophie is the first child that I sponsored. When I started the plan was called Childreach, and now it goes by Plan, but I still often refer to it as Childreach out of habit. It works like various other charities, including Save the Children, where you sponsor a specific child, and receive updates and letters, and you are supposed to write also, all for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day.

As a non-coffee drinker, I gradually took on two more, and with the automatic withdrawals, I have been a very reliable sponsor. When I was unemployed, I thought about giving them up, and I just couldn’t. Then I thought that maybe if one graduated, I could at least not take on a new one, but just leave it at two. Surely that was reasonable! But then one graduated, and I couldn’t turn down the new one. So, I scrimped, and moved money around, and did the same thing I did with all my other bills, and then finally I was employed again.

I have been good in terms of keeping the money flowing, and I have even occasionally sent gifts when that was an option (a soccer ball, an art kit, etc.), but I have been really horrible about corresponding. I know, it’s hard to believe, but now you see me as a daily blogger. I started doing this before there was any blog at all, and then back when I meant to just be a weekly blogger and wasn’t even consistent with that.

I could generally tell myself that the money was the most important thing, and I do still think that’s true, but there are some important elements to the letters also. In this segmented, hostile world, the opportunity to connect, and build relationships with other people, especially across country lines and ethnic lines and religious lines, is important. Having specific people who care about you, and feeling it, is important, especially for children who may have the odds against them in their environment. Also, impersonal charity probably does not do as much good to us as it could. I’ll be exploring that more.

That’s why I made a task, to really go through and make a habit of writing to my children.

Diana Carolina was my second sponsored child. She was fourteen, in Colombia, and she had a great smile and I really liked her, and worried about her being so pretty, and whether she would get the wrong kind of attention, and those four years just flew by, and I maybe wrote twice, and we do not have a relationship and I do not know what happened to her.

Actually, I ended up taking on a lot of older ones, because sometimes someone who was in the program loses their sponsor, and a lot of people prefer the younger kids, so they needed me more. They also disappeared faster, where the odds of me getting in any contact were really low. Also, sometimes the families move, and you lose them that way. It’s often very unpredictable.

Still, I never thought of that happening with Sophie, because she was so young and it always felt like we had plenty of time. I saw the pictures, and I knew she was getting older, but still, it does not feel like it’s been fourteen years.

So, last night I wrote to all three children, none of whom I have written to before, as they are currently all relatively new. I sent them all the exact same letter, telling them a little about my job and my family, and that I am bad at writing but I am going to try. Ignacio is going to be 17, and I thought I didn’t have very long with him. Today I got mail that his family has moved, and that note won’t be received. I will have to send one to Bara, who will be 15.

Hansare is only 11 and Valerie is 12. I am going to try and be more diligent with them, because they really do grow up fast.

It doesn’t mean the task is really completed. Getting one set of letters out is one thing, and I will be trying to do it again and again. However, it is some progress, of a kind, and I will take it.

http://www.planusa.org/