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When you support a child overseas, you help their entire community. Lidya is an Ethiopian sponsor child who wants to use her opportunity to help children in need. This is her story.

My name is Lidya. I am now 20 and am in my third year studying medicine at Addis Ababa University, College of Medical Sciences. Along with my university classes, I am a volunteer at the Ethiopian Cancer Society where I serve in various community based awareness activities.

In 1999 when I was five I was enrolled in ChildFund Ethiopia`s program in my village. In 2000 I became sponsored. I was living with my single mum with no shelter and not enough food. My mother couldn`t afford house rent and my school fees. Our daily condition was very devastating. Petty trade, which my mother used to do, was the only means of our livelihood. I felt very happy when I got the chance to enrol in ChildFund`s sponsorship program.

I benefited from so many life changing things from ChildFund`s sponsorship program such as the payment of school fees, provision of uniforms, textbooks, and medical support. The sponsorship program has also been an opportunity to improve my self-expression. The very concept of letter formation was the best experience I have learned during my childhood. As a young child, I experienced the joy of letter writing. Letter writing and pictures were the main means for the communication I had with my sponsor. It was an amazing experience as it was a chance for me to express myself and explain how I feel about my sponsor. It also helped me to develop my skills of letter writing; sometimes even in English.

I also had an amazing experience in recreational visits we used to make to the countryside. Together with letter correspondence and short trainings by ChildFund, the sponsorship program helped me not only in material benefits but also in skills like oral and written communications.

I would like to thank ChildFund for the kind and unreserved support I have been provided.

Like Lidya, Yiheyis was one a child in need of support in Ethiopia. As a sponsor child, she received the educational supported she needed to find her calling. This is her story.

My name is Yiheyis and I am 20 years old. When I was a child, my parents had no viable source of household financial income to make our living. They couldn`t afford my school fees and materials. Our life depended only on my father`s monthly small salary which was not enough to support my family after half of it was paid to rent the small house we lived in. I remember I spent part of my childhood being a street shopper, selling some stuff to cover my school supplies.

The feeling was amazing when I got the chance of sponsorship in ChildFund because I knew the fact that ChildFund sponsorship helps much, especially for my education. After being enrolled in ChildFund Ethiopia, things began to change. I began feeling better about myself, my family and life. It was an amazing experience to enjoy new school materials and clothes every school year since my early grades. I benefited from so many life changing things from ChildFund`s sponsorship program.

It was also very good luck for me to experience new skills like art and painting when I was in high school. In my early childhood, I extremely enjoyed drawing paintings using colour pencils, which ChildFund used to provide me with. I gradually develop an interest in art and I am now a second year Fine Arts student at a reputed vocational training college, which wouldn`t be possible if it was not for ChildFund Ethiopia.

Through my paint sketches, I could express my feelings about my vision of the world, my community and life. Sponsorship helped me much in terms of developing this skill, nurturing me from an early age. Letter writing and its associated skills like reading and writing were also other things I benefited as part of ChildFund`s sponsorship program. The three parts of a letter, the intro, the body and the closing, are my early knowledge of the subject. Letter writing and my paintings were the main ways of communication with my sponsor. It was an amazing experience as it was a chance for me to express myself and tell what I feel about my sponsor. I am so grateful my sponsor decided to help a child overseas.

The sponsorship program helped me not only in materials but in skills like oral and written communication, but more importantly in finding my career niche, which is art. Thank you ChildFund for the help I have been receiving and helping me in my personal development through the process.

For Meethor, who comes from an ethnic minority group in Laos, access to education not only means literacy and numeracy, but a new passion for languages.

Nonghet District is one of the poorest regions in Xieng Kouang Province, Laos. Here, the majority of the population is H’mong, an ethnic minority group in Laos often excluded from development opportunities.

In what is predominantly an agricultural community, with farmers harvesting corn and raising livestock such as pigs, ducks and chickens, education levels among adults are very low. This is due to the fact that schools have been difficult to access, or are simply not available within reasonable travelling distance.

To improve basic literacy and numeracy levels for the new generation, ChildFund Laos is working with local communities and government bodies to give every child in this district the opportunity to attend a school which has proper infrastructure and is easily accessable.

Just recently I met a young girl called Meethor. She is 12 years old and a year 4 primary student at Nammen village school. She described to me what her school used to look like: “In the past, the school was just a small wooden building. Some parts of the building were broken and there were many small and big holes on the walls.”

This meant that students like Meethor were exposed to all the elements during class. She explains: “The walls could not protect the students from the wind, and during the winter season because the wind flew through those holes.

“Some years, the weather was very cold and the teacher would tell us to stop studying because they were worried that students would become ill.”

As a result, learning was a slow process and the teacher was not always able to complete the syllabus during the time allotted.

But school life has improved dramatically for Meethor. Now, with support from ChildFund Laos and the Australian Government, their classrooms are brand new, and much bigger than before. Meethor says: “The building is so strong it can protect us from the wind in each season.”

Built using bricks and cement instead of timber, there are now classrooms to accommodate all of the year 1- 5 students, a room for teachers, new toilets and sanitation facilities, and a large playground for outdoor activities.

For children from ethnic minority groups, school may be the first time that they have the chance to learn the Lao language, which is not usually spoken at home. Meethor says: “All people in my family communicate with each other in the Khmu language. They can not speak Lao well. Even for me, I could not speak fluently. This problem encouraged me to attend school and study the Lao language.

“Now I can speak, read and communicate fluently with other people in Lao language and I have more confidence. I can also easily read the billboards along the streets and even the signs on buses going past.”

In fact, Meethor has developed such a passion for languages that she is already contemplating how it might figure in her future career. “I have one year left before I complete primary school. Then I have a plan to continue my study in the lower and upper secondary levels.

“I have a big dream that I would like to go on to further education at university, where I could major in my favourite subject – Lao language. I would like to teach Lao language so I can bring all my knowledge and experience and transfer it to the children in my community. I can educate the students to be people who have great knowledge and abilities.”

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