Frequently asked questions

Yes, visits to sponsored children are usually possible after the first year of sponsorship.

Trips must be planned well in advance because travel to villages will need to be planned and their school activities etc must be worked around. Weekends are usually the best time. There are costs involved and these can be calculated for individual visits. Our staff will always take you to visit your sponsored child.

If you are interested please open a discussion by emailing us through our contact form. Be sure to include your child’s name and country.

Heart For Kids encourages sponsors to participate in the life of their child.

How can this happen:

• Pray regularly for your child and their family
• Sponsors are encouraged to write occasional letters to their child with update from your life and pictures. These letters allow your child to share in your life and relationships are built. Letters will be forwarded to your child as and when our team are visiting them. Sponsors are provided with guidelines for letter writing. Please note that we have limited resources to manage letters between sponsors and children. Every letter to a child must be processed by our translation team, then sent to our in-country team and finally given to your child. It’s not a simple task but we value the impact of letters greatly. We ask that you write to your sponsored child a maximum of once in four months.
• Provide gifts for your child’s birthday or Christmas. We’re not able to send actual gifts to your child so a gift of money is the best method. This will then be used locally to bless your child in the most appropriate way.
• Commit to a long term relationship with your child.
• You can write a letter to your child by clicking here
• All communications between sponsors and their children or in-country offices go through our international office and translation team to protect the security of each child we serve.

Sponsoring is easy. Simply visit our page to see children who need sponsors now. Then go to our Sponsorship page to commence your financial sponsorship. You will complete a form providing information about yourself so we can provide you with child information then complete your payment via credit card on the secure form.

We will then be in touch soon afterwards and send you your child card with details of their situation.

Please click here for information about updating your credit card details

When you choose to be a child sponsor, you create a special bond with a child who is in great need. You will make a huge difference to a child’s future by providing them with an opportunity to meet their basic needs and to receive an education, which is so vital in breaking the poverty cycle.

We encourage you to write to your sponsored child, send photos and small gifts to create a bond with them and to let them know that you care about them. You’ll find that sponsorship is incredibly rewarding for you too. Through letters and reports, you can see the progress of your sponsored child and their community over the years, and know that you have made a difference to a child’s life and future.

We forward letters by e-mail to our inland workers, so we ask that you not use any religious terms as some e-mails are being censored by the government. Our workers will translate your letter and take both copies to the child on the next visit. Children are encouraged to write back to their sponsors. Our workers will translate their letter into English and send it to us by e-mail.

Your sponsorship can be paid setup online via our secure sponsorship page.

We hope that you will want to be part of Heart For Kids work for some time. Our work is long-term and committed support from sponsors allows us to achieve lasting results. However long you will be with us, your sponsorship is very important to us. Children are normally sponsored until they reach the age of 18. Sometimes we extend that age if we are helping the child through university.

Circumstances can however change during your sponsorship: the child’s family might migrate to another area, our work within that community might come to an end or your financial circumstances could change.

We have found it best to place some restrictions on what sponsors can give. We support many families who are living on the poverty level, many under $2 per day. If we do not place some guidelines and restrictions on the type and size of gifts we may inadvertently encourage a level of dependancy. We could also encourage feelings of jealousy between children in the village.

Our staff encourage the children to understand that gifts are to  be encouragements from sponsors, signs of their genuine love and best wishes for their child and not to be taken as something to expect. We encourage children to study diligently and strive to achieve all that they can to become the person they were created to be.

As a guideline we suggest you can give up to $200 a year to your sponsored child. This could perhaps be a $100 birthday gift and a $100 general gift.

Children who are studying at university have greater costs cost the yearly gift to them might be up to $500

If you wanted to give to the family in general this could be up to an additional $1,000.

These are guidelines for sponsors who feel they would like to make additional gifts.

Sponsors should not include messages about financial gifts in their letters to their child. This creates expectations which can be harmful.

Monthly child sponsorship is $AUD45.00. It can be paid via our secure online payments page or by bank transfer. If paying by bank transfer please email our office so we know to expect your funds as many banks do not make clear reference to the donor.

Child sponsorship is a means of raising long-term support for the child until they complete their high school education and can take care of themselves. For some children it even means supporting them through their university education. It is a rich and rewarding experience for the sponsors which has real impact in the lives of the child and also, because education helps improve adult life too, will impact future generations. We hope our sponsors see their role as a long term commitment however we realise that changes occur in everyone’s lives. Your sponsorship provides needy children, their families and communities with lasting practical support.

Sponsors receive:

• A photo card of your child and a sponsorship welcome kit
• Regular e-newsletter from Heart For Kids, generally every 2-3 months
• Up to two letters yearly from your child
• An update should anything significant change in the situation of your child

When you first sponsor a child we send you a welcome letter along with your child card. That letter includes your child and sponsor numbers. It’s helpful to use your sponsor number when communicating with us and when writing online letters to your child.

If you can no longer locate your welcome letter please email our admin team.

Whats next

• Send a message
• Make a Christmas gift

Heart For Kids child programs are, in China, from smaller cities or rural areas in central and north west of the country. In India the children are in the west and the youth project in Indonesia is on Bali.

Child sponsorship sows into our various projects allowing us to impact groups of children in our projects. Child sponsorship enables us to operate homes and programs like Doves Wings, Morning Light and IndiaHeart. It means children can remain in school. Many are forced to leave school due to family poverty and not being able to afford education. We provide educational scholarships to help break a very real cycle of children growing up without education and continuing the poverty cycle. Child sponsorship also enables us to provide medical care and sow into community programs where needed.

Historically we have been able to send 83% of funding to the child programs. This is quite high by comparison to many other organisations.

Please click here for information about updating your credit card details

Heart For Kids encourages sponsors to participate in the life of their child.

How can this happen:

• Pray regularly for your child and their family
• Sponsors are encouraged to write occasional letters to their child with update from your life and pictures. These letters allow your child to share in your life and relationships are built. Letters will be forwarded to your child as and when our team are visiting them. Sponsors are provided with guidelines for letter writing. Please note that we have limited resources to manage letters between sponsors and children. Every letter to a child must be processed by our translation team, then sent to our in-country team and finally given to your child. It’s not a simple task but we value the impact of letters greatly. We ask that you write to your sponsored child a maximum of once in four months.
• Provide gifts for your child’s birthday or Christmas. We’re not able to send actual gifts to your child so a gift of money is the best method. This will then be used locally to bless your child in the most appropriate way.
• Commit to a long term relationship with your child.
• You can write a letter to your child by clicking here
• All communications between sponsors and their children or in-country offices go through our international office and translation team to protect the security of each child we serve.