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.”