Community Development Archives - Page 22 of 103

Actress and ChildFund Ambassador Danielle Cormack has had her fair share of nerves especially on an opening night of a play or a movie premiere. But as she drove through the small villages of remote Uganda on a recent trip she was struck by an unexpected jolt of nerves.

“It was a mixture of anxiety, excitement and anticipation,” she says.

For the last 13 years, Danielle waited for this moment, the first face-to-face meeting with her sponsored child Akullu. This is Danielle’s story.

“I had dreamed of meeting her for 13 years, and finally there she was…”

As Danielle’s vehicle made the final turn towards Akullu’s tiny village, she spotted a jubilant group of women waving branches and cheering. At the front of the pack was the 18-year-old Danielle travelled across the world to see.

“I had dreamed of meeting her for 13 years, and finally there she was standing in front of me,” Danielle says.

“I’ve seen her grow up through her letters.”

“I’ve seen her grow up through her letters. When I first started sponsoring Akullu, her grandfather was corresponding with me on her behalf as Akullu was only a little girl. Now she’s grown into this incredible young woman.”

Akullu was just five years old when Danielle started sponsoring her. Girls like Akullu in regional parts of Uganda face serious hurdles, including a lack of access to education, healthcare and nutritious food.

Danielle’s sponsorship has helped improve Akullu’s life and supported investments that will benefit her community for years to come. Akullu’s extended family and other people from her village gathered around to meet Danielle and thank her for her support.

After her daughter Jacinta had her first birthday, Sue Mandelik sponsored a girl in Vietnam of the same age.

Thom appeared in a photo in the mail, wearing a bright green top and a blue and yellow bonnet.

The little girl was from one of the poorest communes in Bac Kan province, in northern Vietnam, according to the accompanying sponsorship letter.

Below Sue and Jacinta talk about their child sponsorship journey and what they learned from their experience as Thom’s child sponsors.

Sue sponsors Thom

At the time Sue sponsored Thom, 45 per cent of children under the age of one in Bac Kan suffered from malnutrition.

Thom lived with her parents, who were farmers, in a wooden hut without electricity. The local community had no access to basic healthcare.

The family fetched water for drinking from a nearby stream polluted with waste and dirt, and this often was the reason for Thom’s coughs, diarrhoea and worms, the letter said.

Contrasting childhoods shared through sponsorship

It was a stark contrast to Jacinta’s life in Sydney, where clean drinking water ran from the tap and medical help was a phone call or short drive away.

But it was exactly this contrast that Sue (pictured above) wanted her daughter to experience.

The mother of two sponsored Thom on behalf of her eldest daughter Jacinta for 17 years, and the girls learnt about each other’s lives through writing letters and sharing photos.

“I chose a child the same age as Jacinta as I wanted them to grow up together,” says Sue. “I wanted Jacinta to learn about other people and other cultures.”

Gifts for Good

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