Author: Jessica Valdez

Hope Haven Rwanda, Hope Haven for short, is home to hundreds of students whose ages range from baby class (ages three to four) all the way to secondary 1 (seventh grade). The school in Rwanda, Africa provides over a thousand meals a day, fro some these meals are the only ones these kids receive all day. To help build up the community the school offers the parents of children who cant pay for tuition to work at hope haven one day a week. The staff of the school is fully run on Africans and they only depend on Americans for things like art supplies and toiletries for the girls that attend, as well as other necessities that they may not have access to. Each year a raffle takes place to emit new students to the school they usually take about 45 boys and 45 girls starting in baby class. It is not uncommon for older children to get picked as well. In the Village of Murindi Hope Haven is well known and loved by the entire community. The school has one of the top three computer labs in the entire country and there secondary 1 students placed in the top three percent of the country. With their sponsorship program it differs from one like Compassion International. Instead of your donation going to one kid it goes to the school so that all the kids that attend can benefit from the donation. You are still able to connect with only one child and you are called a Hope Angel, which to them means a friend from america. The students and their families are not to know that you are sending money to the school for their child because they will assume you are going to pay for everything for their family. With all that being said, if every child is sponsored, 90 percent of the costs of the school will be covered and they will be able to do more for the community, like build a secondary school, or emit more students. Which will help to create new jobs for the people in the community and build them up even more.

Each child that is sponsored gets to connect with the person or family that is sponsoring them. While Compassion International the children know that you are paying for their school and meals. With the school Hope Haven Rwanda, the children don’t know that you are donating money, they just know that they have a new friend the loves them. These kids dream about coming to America. The letters that are exchanged throughout the year from sponsor to child and child to sponsor are very important. Sometimes there are restrictions in what you can put, for example; nothing that resembles money like a house or phone so possessions are usually not included in letters. Most of the time the non-profit will recommend you tell them that they are loved and they are doing a good job sometimes they also prefer you add bible verses or talk about Jesus in your letter. It is important for these kids to know that somebody loves them because they might not feel that at home. The only support the child gets besides their teacher could be from the letters they receive. Through the letters as a sponsor you are able to see how your donation is affecting this child’s life and you become connected with them. For some children that are sponsored through compassion international they get to meet their sponsor and the family, you can do that at hope haven again they can’t know you are giving money though. Seeing these kids and what they accomplished first hand or even just hearing about it it an amazing thing. With these letters people are being connected all over the world and a countless number of lives are being changed. Also eventually you are able to visit your child and meet them in person as well as their family.

Education is something that we may take for granted. Not every child has access to an education especially in third world countries. In countries like Rwanda, Africa education is hard to come by in the villages. not every child gets the opportunity to go to school. Schools like Hope Haven Rwanda provides children with an education that consists of mathematics, science, religion, language ( English, Kenyarwandan, Swahili, and French), art, social studies, and a computer class where they learn technology skills. This school has one of the top computer labs in the entire country and is providing these kids with opportunities their parents never had to better their situation. Also the school provides jobs for the parents to come work once a week to pay for their child’s fee. The school is run by Africans and Americans come throughout the year to run mission trips, pick the children for the next year, and to bring supplies that they need to stay running for the year. This last year the seventh graders took their exams and scored in the top three percentile of the entire country.

There are many different views of child sponsorship, I believe that it is important. For many children in the United States and internationally, they are living with less opportunity than most of us. By sponsoring a child it provides them and their families with new resources that they didn’t have before. Nutrition is an important thing. In places like the poorer villages outside the city, children can look well fed like they have full tummies; when in reality it is a sign that they aren’t getting protein and are not being nourished. Meat in countries like Rwanda, Africa is expensive for the people living in the village. Usually meat is cooked for a birthday and Christmas, if they are lucky. For some it is only served once a year rather than twice. By sponsoring a child you are paying for their food needs. For a non-profit like Hope Haven Rwanda, a school twenty minutes from the capital, Kigali, of Rwanda, Africa, they provide over a thousand meals a day for the students that attend. They get breakfast, porridge, and lunch, rice and beans or poshu and beans. Every Friday these kids get meat in there lunches and since they recently built a chicken coup that holds seven hundred chickens eggs are also added to their Friday lunch meals.

Child sponsorship is when somebody decides to pay a monthly amount of money to a specific child through a non-profit organization. The money goes to the tuition for the child’s education, school supplies, food, and any other necessity that his or her family does not have access to. Child sponsorship has been around since 1920, with one of the first organizations being Save the Children. This organization was founded to help children after World War I. There is a communication process through letters between a sponsor and the child they are sponsoring. you can see the children that still need to be sponsored on each non-profits website. Each child has a profile that includes a picture, how old they are, their birthday, where they live, and fun things like their favorite color or what they want to be when they grow up. You can select a child and then get set up with payment plans and the website will tell you everything you need to know. There is a place to look at frequently asked questions or find contact information of a person who can help you during this process if you run into issues.