Letter from Anna Marie

I received a CP letter from Anna Marie today!

Dear Ms. Dillon,

A pleasant day to you, your family and your special someone! Hope both of you in a good health as well as like me.

I'm so happy to receive letters and card that you're sending to me and it's so beautiful and impressive. It's so nice to hear that you are very proud of me. Now this second semester I have nine classes also which makes me so busy and need more efforts because I together with my groupmates make thesis, interpretative dance, and preparing Human Resource Development Management Day Pageant which is about pageant. I'm one of the organizers of our section. We make dresses made of recycled materials to show our creativity. My favorite class is physical education because I love dancing and to show my talent to them.

I'm so very thankful to you and to your family for your continuous support in my studies. May God bless you always.

With prayer,
Anna Marie

Nine classes, wow! I love that she's had the opportunity to continue dancing and I'm proud to hear that she's active in the pageant organization!

Spotlight Child of the Week, 3/29/14

I've been very remiss in keeping this blog updated, but life is finally settling back to normal and I should be able to post more regularly now!

Two little girls in the Philippines have caught my eye each of the last several times I've looked through the list of waiting children, and they will be my Spotlight Children this week:

Alyzon Anne lives with her parents and one sibling in a plywood house with a dirt floor. They have non-regulated electricity and they must get their water from a neighbor's faucet. With a family income of only $87 a month, they have little hope of a bright future for five-year-old Alyzon. You can change that for them by becoming her Sponsor.


Four-year-old Xyriel lives with her parents and five siblings on a monthly income of only $134. The family is fortunate to have regulated electricity access, but they must get their water from faucets in their community. This sweet angel has to sleep on the concrete floor of her family's home without even a mat to cushion her. You can bring comfort and hope to her life by becoming her Sponsor.

The Love Bomb Project

The Love Bomb project started on Children International's old Sponsor-networking site, LiftOne (which has now been replaced with "My Social Center"). A couple of Sponsors had some costly projects they wanted to fund for their children, and they realized that if every member of LiftOne donated $1-$2, they could easily fund the projects. So each week, a different fundraiser from the waiting list was featured as the target for Love Bombing -- a lot of great projects were funded with hundreds of small donations! There are all different types of fundraisers: paying for home improvements for a family, building a library at a community center, funding the tuition and fees for a child's education, setting up a business venture to help the family earn more income themselves ...

Over time, though, it became apparent that the Love Bombing was *mostly* being done by a few same repeat donors, and those Sponsors were becoming burnt out. The frequency was reduced to a new target every other week. Then, the Sponsor who had been coordinating the rotation had life happen and could no longer devote the time to running it. Another Sponsor took over, but we have since lost her as well.

So now I have volunteered to try and revitalize it. The new networking site has seen an influx of participation from sponsors who never used LiftOne, so the time is ripe to get new people involved! I'll be featuring the first target on April 1st, and I already have the spreadsheet set up to track the rotation and how successful the project is.

I won't be asking my friends and family to donate to each and every one of these fundraisers, of course--that would be absurd and annoying! You will see me announce the new target and share the link every other week, though--if one strikes your fancy as a worthwhile project, please do feel free to donate a dollar or two, and/or to share the link with your contacts.