Search Home About Us You Can Help Local Offices Outreach Areas News Contact Us Reps and Church Contacts Login Home > Sponsor Information If you already sponsor a child with us, this page will give you some useful information and tips. Contents 1 Communicating with your Child 2 Christmas Gifts 3 Visiting your Child and the Work of AAC 4 When your Child Stops Coming 5 Some Other Frequently Asked Questions Communicating with your Child You can write or send cards and photos to your sponsored child any time. They really do love receiving these. PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO SEND ANYTHING BULKY as this will not get through. Items will either be stolen or confiscated within the receiving country’s postal system, or our local offices will be charged a heavy import tax to receive them. Send all cards and letters to the local offices as follows: FOR ALBANIA Your child’s name & number LWI/Adopt-A-Child Lagjia 1 Rruga “Unaza E Re” MBI Tregun Pogradec Albania FOR GUATEMALA Your child’s name & number Ministerios De Agua Viva Apartado 389 03901 Antigua Guatemala Central America Here are some ideas of what you might include with a letter or card: Photograph of yourself and your family; Postcard from your local area; Individual colouring, puzzle, or activity sheet taken out of a book; A sheet of stickers; Flat bookmark; Inspirational Bible verse card. If you write to your child, they will write back to you. The only exception to this is at Christmas time when, because of the volume of mail, Christmas cards and letters are not replied to. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT GUATEMALA OR ALBANIA WITH ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR CHILD – THEY DO NOT REPLY TO INDIVIDUAL SPONSOR ENQUIRIES. All such enquiries should be directed through your national Adopt-A-Child office. Sending a Gift If you wish to send a birthday or other gift to your child, please send the money for this to AACs National office in your country. This is how the process works:- When your cheque is received, this is acknowledged and processed and a gift list is sent at the beginning of each month to Guatemala and Albania. Our staff there post all the information about your gift on your child’s record and converts the amount into local currency. One of our staff will then search the local market/shops to find appropriate gifts. If you have asked for a specific gift, and your request is appropriate for the child’s circumstances, staff will make every effort to find exactly what you want. In each of our 13 programmes we have people who work with the families to determine sizes and needs. A photo is taken of each child receiving the gift, and the child will draw a picture and/or write a “Thank you” letter. It sometimes takes a while to get the child to do this, depending on where they live (in Guatemala some live up to 2- 3 hours away from the programme). The picture and letter are then processed and translated by our staff, then posted to you. AAC now blesses over 11,000 children in Guatemala and Albania, so you can see how many times this procedure can be carried out each month. Our staff work as cost effectively as possible; however this is still an expensive process. The total amount of what you send for gifts is spent on the child, so we have a lot of overheads which we absorb ourselves. It is therefore best to send one or two larger gifts per year, rather than a lot of small ones. Christmas Gifts Every child on the programmes receives a gift at Christmas time, whether they are sponsored or not. This is a huge undertaking each year and for this reason we cannot process individual Christmas gifts for children or their families. All Christmas Gifts received in November and December are put into the ‘Christmas Fund’ to help cover the costs of all the gifts bought and are not routinely acknowledged. Individual gifts for children and/or their families should be sent between January and October – the exception being gifts for children whose birthdays are in November/December. These will be processed individually as normal, although you may not receive a Thank You for several months, due to the volume of work around the Christmas period. Visiting your Child and the Work of AAC If you are interested in finding out first hand more about Living Water International’s Adopt-A-Child programmes, and/or how to promote the work in your own area, there are opportunities each year to join a group visiting Guatemala or Albania. As part of that (and the highlight for many people!) you are usually able to meet with your sponsored child, either at the feeding programme or in their home. For more information about up and coming Field Trips, contact Alison, our Trips Administrator, on alison@lwintl.org When your Child Stops Coming We do not have an upper age limit for children attending the programme – they are welcome to come as long as they want to. Children may leave the programme for a number of reasons; • Older teenage children may have to work; • Older teenage children may get married; • Families move away from the area; • Children just decide they don’t want to come any more. When any of these things happen, your national office will be notified and you will be contacted to let you know why the child has left. You will also be offered a replacement child to sponsor. Some Other Frequently Asked Questions Q: Where does my sponsorship money go? A: 90% of your monthly sponsorship goes straight out to the work in Guatemala or Albania. The remaining 10% goes towards administration costs. Q: Why do I receive Thank You letters for the Birthday card I sent and the Birthday gift at different times? A: Birthday cards are sent direct to the country where your child lives and these will be replied to as soon as they are translated and given to the child. A birthday gift sent through your national office will be processed and forwarded to the appropriate country at the end of the month and a gift will be bought for your child. While many sponsors do send both a card and money for a gift, some may only send a card and others may only send money for a gift to be bought. The offices in Guatemala and Albania do not wait for a monetary gift before sending the ‘Thank You’ for the card in case there isn’t one. Q: The photograph I received of my child receiving his gift appeared to show clothing that was much too big. Why is this? A: If the team has not had an opportunity to visit beforehand to find out the size required for the child, they will buy what they think will fit, based on the child’s age. The photograph will be taken when the child receives the gift, but if clothing is not the right size it will be exchanged later. Q: Can I e-mail my child? A: Sorry, but no you can’t. Our offices in Guatemala and Albania would not be able to handle the volume of e-mails they would likely receive or the replies they would generate. Even if they could afford them, internet services are not widely available in rural Guatemala or Albania so individual families are not on line. Q: Why do I receive my child’s Annual Updates at different times of the year? A: Our update teams visit each child in their home once a year to collect the information and take an up-to-date photograph. The information is then written up on our database ready for collating into an update. With so many children to see, this is a huge task and cannot always be done at the same time each year, particularly as some children/ families may be working away from home for a few months . This is particularly true in Guatemala where whole families sometimes go to the coast to work during harvest season. Lists of completed updates are sent to each national office in batches throughout the year and are sent out to sponsors as and when they are ready. You will receive one update for each child you sponsor in a calendar year. Q: What is LWI? A: Living Water International (previously known as Living Water Ministries) is our umbrella organisation based in Pace, Florida. It currently operates 13 AAC feeding programmes in Guatemala and Albania. Q: Is Adopt-A-Child a charity? A: Yes. AAC is registered as a charity in the UK and Ireland, Germany, Canada and New Zealand; and in the USA as a 501[c]3 non-profit organization. Q: What denomination is LWI/AAC? A: It is interdenominational. Please remember that you can contact your national Adopt-A-Child office if you have any questions or concerns. We are always happy to speak to our sponsors and help you in any way we can. Adopt-A-Child & Living Water Int'l "Changing the World … One Child at a Time" Sign in|Recent Site Activity|Report Abuse|Print Page|Powered By Google Sites