World Vision in the Dominican Republic

I feel blessed and honored to be able to share this exciting news with you. My daughter and I will be headed Dominican Republic with World Vision with a group of wonderful bloggers. While on the trip, we will be sharing our experience with you in the best way we can.

While I’ve been on several blogging trips and conferences in the past, this is the most important one to me. Since a mission trip to Guatemala in 2008, I’ve felt I needed to do it again. This time I have a much bigger platform to shout my experience! It is also a special trip because I’m taking my 11 year old daughter. This will be a life changing experience for both of us.

World Vision

When I was a child, my mom always sponsored a child through World Vision. I remember watching her write the checks each month. No matter how much money we had or didn’t have, mom faithfully wrote her checks to the church and to World Vision. This really stuck with me. As a child you don’t understand the giving of money to people when you are struggling to make ends meet yourself. However, as an adult, it hits you. You have to give to receive.

As soon as I had my first job in high school, I decided to sponsor my own child. My first experience wasn’t through World Vision but another organization, which was $12/month.  After college, I decided to sponsor my first World Vision child just like my own mom did while we were growing up.

Being a sponsor is a special experience. From the World Vision site, you can find a child you would like to sponsor. You can base it on region, age, birthday, or region affected by Aids. If you want to sponsor a child who is the same age or has the same birth month as your own child, you can. You can share correspondence with your sponsored child, you are sent pictures, and can participate in the special mailers they send for you to personalize for your child.

This past year, I had the experience of going through a full cycle with Luz, from Peru, who grew out of the World Vision program. We are hoping we made a difference in her life! Not only does it make a difference in the sponsored child’s life, it makes a difference in your own life.

We now have three sponsored children, Diya from India and Luis & Angela from Dominican Republic. When we choose these children, we were looking for children around the same age as our children. Diya and Angela are around our two youngest children’s age and Luis and Luz are the same age as our older children. When we picked Luis, we wanted an older child because we were thinking less people probably sponsor the older children, but we could be wrong on that theory!

It is very exciting because my daughter and I will be able to meet our sponsored children in the Dominican Republic. From our correspondence, Luis loves beans (just like me!) and loves to play with toy cars like my boys. Angela isn’t in school yet but she loves to play with dolls like my little girl. I’m excited to be able to hug them in person!

World Vision not only supports the children you sponsor but part of your monthly fees goes to making the entire community a better place to live. They believe in order to help one child, you have to also lift up the entire community. So part of the $35/month sponsorship (depends on the region), goes to healthcare for the community, clean water access, and more.

How to Follow Along

On our trip we will be visiting two World Vision Projects – a new one and a establish project. We will be able to see the difference World Vision is making in these communities. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

Mark your calendars for the first week of May. This week I will *try* to update you daily on our trip progress (bookmark this!). You can also follow us on Twitter – we will be using the hashtag #WVinDR. If you feel so moved, you can sponsor a child today, there are so many waiting!

Other Involved Bloggers

Here’s the other bloggers you will want to follow.

• Matthew – our leader – (World Vision) and his wife Jessica (World Vision)
• Andrea @ Mommy Snacks (World Vision + Dominican Republic + Me)
• Jill @ Diaper Diaries (Change is Coming)
• Amanda @ Oh Amanda (World Vision Bloggers)

I’m excited and humbled to be part of this wonderful group!