Compassion International

“Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.”

Compassion International has a program where individuals or groups can “sponsor a child”. Through their sponsorship program, the sponsor provides $38 per month and is strongly encouraged to send letters to their sponsored child. Compassion also offers the opportunity to sponsors to provide financial resources for a Christmas gift and a birthday gift. Compassion uses the financial gifts to provide the following services

Medical care
Educational opportunities
Important life-skills training
“Most important of all, your sponsored child will hear about Jesus Christ and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God.”

Compassion offers a selection of other great programs, but we particularly love their child sponsorship program. What we really love about Compassion International’s sponsor a child program, beyond the love and care that they provide, is that they are a Christian based organization. In a nutshell, Compassion helps us live out the great commission, as they help us bring the message of Jesus Christ through what they teach and how they serve these wonderful kids.

Compassion International is a very responsible and high quality organization. Charity Navigator gives Compassion 4 stars and indicates that better than 83 percent of all revenue makes it into their programs.

Ministry Watch lists Compassion 19th on their “Shining Light” list of 60 organizations. They are accredited by the Better Business Bureaus’ 20 Standards for Charity Accountability. Finally, Charity Watch gives Compassion an “A” rating.

We are huge fans of the Compassion International program for overcoming poverty!

Cycling

Cycling has been a life long passion of mine. As a kid, I rode everywhere. With a beater bike for my paper route and a Schwinn Sprint for everything else, I was able to get anywhere that I wanted to go. As an adult, with our matching Trek 720’s, my wife and I often rode together. In the summer of 2005, I stepped it up by putting on more than 350 miles. Two bikes and a couple thousand miles later, I continue to enjoy riding.

Ministry for Compassion, the Idea

First of all, if you can support Compassion International directly, then we encourage you to consider doing that. If not, I ride, you financially support the effort and we succeed in doing our part to nurture the world physically and spiritually.

So, you want more detail than that! Well here are the nuts and bolts of our program.

I’ve heard three reasons from people who might be interested in sponsoring a child but does not.

How do I know that my money isn’t being wasted?
I can’t afford it.
I do not mind spending the money, but I’m not interested or do not have the time to commit to the letter writing.

This is where our program hopefully hits the mark. We can’t guarantee that your money isn’t going to be “wasted”. However, we have done the research and are confident that it is extremely unlikely that your gifts will be wasted. If you can’t afford $38 a month, what can you afford? We will pool your gift in with others to sponsor as many children as we can. Don’t have time to commit to or interest in the letter writing? We will match each child up with someone (our focus is on committed parents and their children) who would love to handle the letter writing piece. Not only would you be providing the financial resources to help put a dent in poverty, you will be touching someone’s life by allowing them to communicate with each sponsored child. It is a Win-Win-Win situation.

You can write out a check payable to Compassion International (not Fond du Croix Ministries). We will pool your donations with others and forward them directly to Compassion. 100% of your donation goes directly to Compassion. We will team the sponsored child with a local family to provide the communications piece.