As you know, Sowers4Pastors has recently finished up the most exciting part of the year (at least where child sponsorships are concerned) with the distribution of backpacks and shoes. Since that is the time most children are going to show up, it’s a good opportunity to update attendance records, too. This is something Sowers4Pastors does throughout the year, with the help of school and church records. But it is not uncommon for a child to not show up to events for a while and then show up again at backpack time. If they don’t show up for a backpack, odds are good that they aren’t in the area anymore. Since it’s a time to find out if kids registered for school, it’s also a time of year when a large number of children are removed from the program. Sowers4Pastors recognizes that this is a difficult time for sponsors whose children are no longer participating in the program.
This also presents a time-crunch situation for the administrative staff. They must remove the children from the website, but they also need to notify each sponsor directly if their child is no longer in the program. This adds to the time-crunch because the administrative staff must do multiple things at once. They notify sponsors and cancel the sponsorships without delay because they are paying money each month and it wouldn’t be right to keep charging someone for a child who has moved on. This is tricky business because the notification and cancelation need to happen almost simultaneously. If the sponsor is notified first, they can go directly to the website and cancel the sponsorship. If that happens, the child’s picture will still be on the website and will show up as a child without a sponsor. Someone else could stumble across it and apply to sponsor a child who is no longer available. Yikes!
Notifications from the website come from one email address. Notifications from Trish saying, “I’m sorry, but…” come from a separate address. For various reasons, people don’t always receive the notification from Trish. Sometimes it ends up in a spam folder. Sometimes the sponsors have changed their email address, and forgot to update Sowers4Pastors. The ministry hasn't found a way to remedy the situation. Sowers4Pastors always wants to do right by sponsors, but sometimes this cancellation process causes confusion.
It should be noted that if a sponsor has sent a backpack for their child, an effort is made to get the backpack delivered to that child, even if the child leaves the program. This isn’t always possible, because sometimes the child has left the area, but Sowers4Pastors visits each location three times to attempt delivery. Then they store the backpack for a year, just in case they are able to deliver it during that time.
It’s helpful to remember that one of the main goals of the program is to empower more children to go to school and to go for more years. In the mountain villages of Western Honduras, there is traditionally very low school attendance. The average child doesn’t finish 6th grade. In fact, 6th grade graduation is looked at as a much bigger achievement than high school graduation is in the States. For most families, completing the 6th grade is the highest educational dream imaginable. Many of the parents in these locations never attended school at all! Attendance beyond the 6th grade is extremely rare in the communities connected to sponsorship programs.
You may recall what a big deal it was when the Honduran government decided to build a middle school in the community of Guacutao (where the Edgewater Alliance Church program runs) because so many children were actually completing elementary school and preparing to continue their educations. This shows the program is working. On the whole, children are receiving more education. There are even some high school students in the program. However, if you sponsor a child through Sowers4Pastors, it’s important to recognize this reality: The majority of the children are not going to complete the program all the way through high school.
If you sponsor a 5th or 6th grader, it is likely that you will only have them for a year or two. Some people feel called to sponsor the older children, in part because it is easier to build in-depth relationships through letters. That is a wonderful thing. However, if this is you, be prepared for a high turnover rate of sponsorships. Recognize that your input, however long that lasted, was a part of getting that child and the community to become more involved in education.
A whole new batch of Manna kids is on the website now, and the kids in the Sister Church program are getting added to the site now. You know, maybe there’s a snappy PSA slogan in this after all. Something like: “This is a slow, gradual process, but it is making a difference, one sponsorship at a time.”
- posted by Christi.
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