When Emily Mallett talks about her trip to Tanzania, one story after another spills out: Her encounter with a 33-year-old HIV-positive woman who's caring for children orphaned by AIDS. The grandmother who says her grandchildren now have a future because of child sponsorship. There's also Mariam, the little HIV-positive girl whose smile is etched in Emily's memory forever.
Emily spent 21 days Tanzania with
Destination Life Change this summer. She helped plaster and paint a classroom and saw first-hand what World Vision child sponsorship is doing to change the lives of children and the communities in which they live.
You can hear the emotion in her voice when she talks about her first visit to the school.
"People in Canada question how useful child sponsorship is. 'Are the sponsor children real, and do they really benefit?'" Emily says.
But Emily and her teammates discovered the families of sponsored children have their own questions.
"We were asked if the sponsors were real and why would strangers from the other side of the world love our children?"
While they were at the school, one member of the Destination Life Change team recognized her sponsor child in the crowd.
"She started crying. The little girl started patting her face. The people got to see first hand the love that led to child sponsorship," Emily says. Emily and her teammates visited two Area Development Programs (ADP). An ADP is a geographic area where World Vision serves. One had been operating for four years, the other for fourteen. Both programs were well-organized, but Emily says the more mature program had dams, wells, and well tilled fields. She says it gave her hope for both communities.
"They were proud to show us what they accomplished. They have the will, we give them the way."
Before she went to Tanzania Emily says she found it hard to recruit child sponsors. But it's a different story now.
"To have these personal stories about how child sponsorship is making a difference, saving lives—it's not a cliché. I've got pictures and stories to back it up," she says.
"We know the money helps, but you have no idea of the impact until you've seen people with tears in their eyes, thanking you for being a child sponsor."
Click here to sponsor a child.
