Covid-19 and letter writing

MEXICO

59 136 sponsored children in

220 Compassion centers

"The last two years have been difficult for our country and mainly for our children and their families. The pandemic impacted in a huge way the cities and our communities. Compassion’s priority was to take care of the children and supply food for the families. Thank you for trusting Compassion and for your patience to hear from your sponsored children during these two years.

It has been a huge challenge to send letters to the communities we serve during the pandemic. The communities we serve use a physical courier to send the letters to the Compassion Mexico National Office. Volunteers travel into the cities using public transportation to send packages back to the office. Due to the huge numbers of Covid infections and deaths that we were experiencing in different communities in Mexico. We made the difficult decision to stop processing paper letters

During these two years, we continued to send all the sponsor’s letters to the churches so they could be delivered to the children. We believe that the sponsors have the heart and the words to encourage the children during these difficult times.

We wish to keep children and sponsors in contact, but it has been very hard. Not all the centers are having their normal activities, some others are having small groups. There is still fear about covid as not all the communities have had access to vaccinations, only the big cities. Some fathers have moved, looking for income for their family and they are waiting to come back to the communities when the situation could be normal again.

Because our technology for printing the stationery your children write on is located at the National Office, we must be in person to print stationery to send to the centers. In February 2022, staff was able to return to our National Office in limited quantities. Thousands of pieces of stationery have been printed. These packages are then sent through courier and will take a month to arrive to all the communities where churches are working with children, and at least four months to get them back to the office.

We are hopeful that within the next few months communications from your child will be more regular."

The Compassion Team in Mexico

COLOMBIA

96 248 sponsored children

298 Compassion centers

"In Colombia, the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted some of the difficulties families in poverty had to endure, and in some cases, it even made it worse. Some of these difficulties are lack of employment, which affects children’s nutrition; lack of access to clean water, which in rainy seasons creates displacements of communities because of the flooding-with the risk this implies for the children; the violence some of the most vulnerable locations of the country have to deal with and the recent challenge of the attention to Venezuelan immigration.

Due to local restrictions and to protect children, youth and families from Covid-19 and its variants, the church partners we work with had to adjust program. Some were able to have classes online, through printed learning material or radio. Based on a survey, only 35.7 % of children and youth have Internet access and a computer or tablet. The center staff found out-of-the-box ways to keep serving those children while keeping them safe.

The center staff have worked on safety and health protocols, which has been approved in most cases by local government and the local health authorities. The children are now returning to have in-person program activities. Some centers have started to serve children in small groups, and they have kept other types of contact during the pandemic.

In the last month alone, Compassion and the local churches have delivered over 40,000 food packs and over 12,762 hygiene kits. This has been happening all throughout the pandemic thanks to your support.

We are aware that not receiving information from the children you sponsor generates uncertainty; we know you miss reading their letters and hearing from them. Therefore, in Compassion Colombia we are strongly working to reactivate communication promptly.

Because our technology for printing the physical letters your children write on is located at the National Office, we must be in person to print stationary to send to the churches. In February 2022, our staff in the Colombia National Office were able to return to in-person work at the office and began printing thousands of letters to send out to church partners.

As the number of letters sent to the centers is quite big, we expect to take 2-3 months for the local churches to process and send them back for translation, which may take an additional 2-3 months. We are hopeful that within the next 6 months communications from your child will be more regular."

The Compassion Team in Colombia

PERU

87 079 sponsored children

260 Compassion centers

"When the pandemic arrived here, we worked with our partner churches to prioritize a plan to provide food supplies, medical care and Covid-19 prevention tools to children and families. Since the restrictions were very severe, the help we could provide to children and their families was critical. We would have not been able to do this without your faithful support, so we want to express our heartfelt gratitude for it.

Now, we are starting to return to normal. In-person classes at school are back and some centers are holding small group meetings, after all this time only being connected in virtual ways.

At the beginning of the pandemic in Peru in March 2020, we were forced to pause the processes of letter-writing in the child development centers, because the processes were 100% manual and face-to-face. However, the program for children continued remotely, and the priority was medical attention and food assistance. This lasted until approximately June 2021.

In May-2021 we restarted the communication processes progressively. At the beginning of July 2021, more than 70,000 children hadn’t been able to write a letter to their sponsors for more than 8 months.

65% of our church partners are now providing face-to-face interactions with the children in small groups. We have restarted the printing of stationery at the National Office so that the children can prepare their letters.

We have been continuing to deliver letters from sponsors to children. Since 2020, the sponsor letters have been distributed virtually. Once the Church receives the sponsor’s letter, it proceeds to send it to the beneficiary through a virtual way or print them and deliver them in a physical way during a home visit.

Our commitment is to regularize Sponsor and Child Communications as soon as possible because we know that sponsors are waiting to hear from their children, for this reason, we are working even more to complete the process of preparing letters in the following months."

The Compassion Team in Peru

BANGLADESH

40 094 sponsored children

175 Compassion centers

"The last two years have been a time of uncertainty bringing unprecedented challenges to all of us. We were unable to facilitate letters from your sponsored child due to movement restrictions of Covid-19. Center staff have been in touch through mobile phones, home visits or courtyard meeting to be in touch with children as the local context permitted. Families of sponsored children had the need for food security and improved hygiene. We ensured that food relief and hygiene supplies were provided to them. Also, we have been focusing on enabling partners to ensure family-owned food security initiatives like poultry and kitchen garden, income generation support through provision of goats and small business, and importantly promoting savings groups to build on their household resilience. Child protection, physical health and hygiene with mental health protection orientation was given to parents, children, and youth, wherever possible either through home visits or courtyard meetings.

At another level, we also had the partnership opportunity to support families who were affected by a major cyclone, “Amphan”, with housing construction, housing repairs and toilet constructions, so that children and youth have a safe place to live securely.

From March 2020- September 2020, the Bangladesh National Office was closed. Because our technology for printing the letters your children write on is located at the National Office, we must be in person to print stationery to send to the child development centers. In September 2020, we arranged transport (as public transport was too risky) for 6 staff members to split time in the office. In that time, we were able to print thousands of letters. During this time, child development centers had begun to gather in small groups and guided children through letter-writing and other activities. Although the letter process was delayed, it was happening slowly. But from March 2021, the situation started to get worse again, and a country-wide lockdown was enforced by the government.

The National Office was closed again from March 21 – August 21. In September, staff began going to the office by rotation once again.

During pandemic we couldn’t manage to do some of our regular work as we worked from home. Without access to the necessary technology, the letter processing work cannot be done from home. We tried to process letters coming to the office by rotation. But the local courier system in Bangladesh is not satisfactory in many cases and not modern like many other countries, and during the pandemic the courier services were shut down.

We will be continuing to print stationery with a hope that the pandemic situation will get better and better in the coming days by God’s grace. But in case you have not yet received any letter thus far, we request you to bear with us until we get back to the normal rhythm."

The Compassion Team in Bangladesh

BRAZIL

58 709 sponsored children

200 Compassion centers

"Each Brazilian state has its own ordinances and operating permits regarding the protection against Covid-19. Because we serve more than one hundred small cities in six different states, we have managed different ordinances and permits concerning the opening of the church activities. Today, in April 2022, thank God, the situation is much more stable, and the 207 church partners can resume their activities in the communities, their services, and the centers they conduct in partnership with Compassion serving the kids. Last year, we identified many Compassion centers that would be able to write letters with children even though they were unable to come to the center. In those centers, all sponsored children during that moment, received one letter to write. However, they faced more difficulties because the omicron variant started to impact their communities.

During the pandemic, your support was simply vital in helping local churches care for children and their families. Your contribution was literally the food on your sponsored child's table for many months and in most cases the only source of meals for the families we serve. Our team has taken every opportunity to help families, communities and your sponsored child in all areas that could bring them safety and health. We have strengthened our child protection, with interactive campaigns to help beneficiaries report any type of abuse they might have suffered during lockdown season and how they can ask for help.

At the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 we had a huge wave of Omicron variant that impacted all our church partners. Many Compassion centers that were restarting activities in October and November, had to close again during December and January.

We have one concern that is related to Brazil courier service. Currently, it is a governmental entity that does this kind of delivery, and they are presenting a lot of issues, including lost packages and/or very long delays to deliver. The main issue is that as the communities we serve are in rural areas, their logistic is very bad. Unfortunately, we cannot contract a private courier, because by Brazilians law this kind of document (letter) is only delivered by them.

Today, we continue to print thousands of stationery for the sponsored children to write on and we are distributing these to the child development centers. If all runs well over the next few months, we plan to process letters more regularly from July on."

The Compassion Team in Brazil

Covid-19 and letter writing

MEXICO

COLOMBIA

SRI LANKA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

ECUADOR

PERU

BANGLADESH

BRAZIL

THAILAND