Child Sponsorship FAQ

Absolutely! A sponsorship provides food, education, medical services, and program costs, as those on the ground continue to serve vulnerable children and their communities in new, creative ways. All the children in our program are continuing schoolwork, as much as possible.

Sponsor Relations Associates are available to take your calls between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. PT, Monday — Friday. Our office number is 1-844-LOV-MOHI. Or you may send an e-mail and a member of our team will respond as quickly as possible.

Child sponsorship is used as one part of a holistic approach to poverty, called Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Funds received through sponsorship are used to provide for the children’s medical and spiritual needs, as well as nutritious meals. While they are also used to pay for school fees, the child’s parents are still responsible for contributing a small amount toward that cost. This is a key principle of CHE: engage the parents in community involvement and empower them to learn how to provide for themselves.

Your sponsorship dollars are processed and receipted through MOHI’s main offices in Phoenix, Arizona. Our program allows for a one-on-one relationship with a sponsor, while pooling the gifts of all sponsors who support children in the same community. Funds are wired over to the respective fields on a monthly basis to cover the expenses for the children. However, sponsorship of a child is more than just financial support. We encourage sponsors to write to their children often and let them know what is happening in their lives. It is a tremendous encouragement to the children to hear from their sponsors and know that there is someone in another part of the world who loves them and prays for them.

This combination of financial support and encouragement instills a sense of hope in the children, and helps them to gain a solid education. This education can open doors to college, university or trade school, where the children – now young adults – can learn critical skills in order to gain meaningful employment. With an education and a good job, the cycle of poverty is broken; as adults with their own families, they can enjoy lives transformed through the power of Christ!

Missions of Hope International (MOHI) is a holistic ministry serving children and families in disadvantaged communities throughout Kenya. Driven by the mission to transform lives through the hope of Jesus Christ, MOHI has built more than 25 schools, impacted tens of thousands of families, and shared the love of Jesus with more than 30,000 children since its inception in 2000.

Through partnerships with churches and supporters worldwide, MOHI has grown from an individual calling to a global ministry changing the landscape of opportunity in poverty-stricken areas. Today, MOHI offers a wide variety of integrated programs that seek to educate, empower, restore, and redeem whole communities for Christ.

MOHI currently operates 25 schools in Kenya, stretching from the urban slums of Kenya to the remote desert regions of Turkana. Over the next 10 years MOHI prayerfully plans to expand their ministry reaching out to other impoverished countries as well.

The process can vary from location to location, but generally, social workers evaluate children based on their specific needs. Orphans, vulnerable children and the poorest of the poor are recruited first. Other factors, such as family situation, living conditions or siblings who are already in the program, can also have an impact on recruitment.

No. Children or their families are not required to be Christians or to become Christians. However, students will participate in Christian-based programs and activities, and in some cases, children attend Christian schools.

Generally, $40 per month will cover the needs of primary school children in our programs. In some fields, $70 per month will cover the needs of students attending a boarding school or high school.

Only 14% is used to cover administrative expenses, which are essentially the costs of running the program. Without these expenses, the program would not be able to operate. The remaining 86% of funds go toward providing and maintaining safe program facilities, medical care, spiritual development, nutritious meals, and school fees, which can cover uniforms, supplies, textbooks and teacher salaries.

Children in our sponsorship program receive an education, nutritious meals (or nutritional supplements), medical care, and guidance in both spiritual and social development. Studies show that these children are more likely to gain a higher education and/or develop specific skills that will enable them to gain meaningful employment and rise above a life of poverty.

Generally, a child can have only one sponsoring person, couple or family. We do allow relatives and/or small groups to collectively sponsor a child, but there still must be one individual selected to be the primary sponsor of record. Only the primary sponsor (or couple or family) will receive communications from and information regarding the child. Secondary sponsors will still receive their own receipts and statements for their support gifts.

Once you’re ready to select a child, click here to browse profiles of children who still need a sponsor. You can follow the prompts to process your sponsorship once you have chosen a child. Once your sponsorship is started you will receive a packet of information to help you in beginning a special relationship with your sponsored child.

Additionally, you can engage your church through a child sponsorship event! We provide everything you need so anyone in your church can choose a child to sponsor. They can look through profile cards with pictures on-site, select a child by age and gender, then sign up to sponsor him or her. If you are interested in hosting an event, you can email us at sponsorship@mohiafrica.org.

All of the information we have about your child is printed on the child’s profile card. If you’ve lost your child’s profile card or would like another one mailed to you, please contact our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI or sponsorship@mohiafrica.org.

You can also view your child(ren)’s profile(s) online by creating or signing into your online account. PLEASE NOTE: If creating your online account for the first time, not all account information will display immediately. It could take up to one business day to complete the setup of your new online account.

Once you are logged in you can view information about your sponsored child, your donations and other information helpful in managing your sponsorship.

Your child should write to you at least once a year to let you know what is going on in his/her life. In addition, MOHI will notify sponsors any time we are made aware of a major event that occurs in the life of your child.

Due to cultural differences, family issues, illness and harsh living conditions, children may stop attending school, often without any warning. While we hope that your child remains in MOHI’s child sponsorship program until his or her schooling is complete, we can’t promise that your relationship with one particular child will be able to continue indefinitely. We can promise, however, that your sponsorship plants a seed of hope and faith in the heart of your child whether she attends school for one week, three months or years. And if your child leaves the program for any reason, we will let you know that information as soon as possible, and immediately provide a new child to you so you can continue to participate in the blessings of transformation.

Our team makes every effort to return a child to the program if they stop attending for any reason. We give children a three-month grace period if they stop attending school. During this time, the social workers and program managers are doing everything possible to get the child back in the program. During the time that a student is not attending, your donations continue to go toward covering the costs for children in the program. If the child doesn’t return after three months, we officially remove them from the program and connect you with another child in need of sponsorship.

Children in developing countries often do not start school at the same age as children in the United States, so it is hard to define a specific age range. In most cases, children can be recruited into the program as young as pre-school age and can remain in our program up to a year after graduating from high school.

Your sponsored child’s mailing address is located on the community information card that was sent with your new sponsorship packet. You can also find the address on your child’s community page by clicking their location here:

Mathare Family Hope Center
(Child’s name and ID number)
(School name)
PO Box 71484
Nairobi 00622
Kenya

You can also find your child’s mailing address by creating or signing into your online account.

From your My Account page, click on the “My Child Sponsorships” bar to see the profiles of each child you sponsor. Click on the “Letters/Gifts” tab below each child to see his or her specific mailing address.

Details on size restrictions and methods for mailing items to your child can be found on “How to Send Letters and Gifts“.

Please read this information here: “How to Send Letters and Gifts“

Giving money to people living in poverty reinforces a “handout” mentality and can lead to asking/begging for money in order to survive. While handouts may be of some help in the short-term, it can create a devastating dependence and does nothing to break the cycle of poverty. Our goal is to educate those living in impoverished areas and assist them in building the skills necessary to find employment and learn how to provide for themselves.

Items that are large, heavy or appear to be expensive have a greater chance of being held in customs in the receiving country. Items held in customs are charged a tax or fee before they can be retrieved. Families do not have extra money to pay these fees, so any package held there will probably never reach your child.

Based on feedback from our field teams and experiences of our sponsors, we have determined that envelopes that are 6″ x 9″ or smaller have the best chance of being delivered to your child.

Yes! If you will be traveling to the area where your child lives and would like to arrange to meet him/her, please contact our office at least one month in advance to make arrangements. If you are traveling with a short-term mission team, please be sure to work with your team leader to plan time for meeting with your child.

We understand that receiving a letter from your child is a treasured part of your sponsorship experience, and we work very hard with our field teams to facilitate that communication. While sponsors may write several times to their children, the children will write at least one letter to their sponsors at a specific time each year. Children do not necessarily respond to every letter that is sent to them from their sponsors.

Sponsorship is wholly funded through donated support, so we cannot “bill” you for a donation. If you pay by check or bank bill pay, we will send you a receipt for your gift. At the bottom of your receipt is a coupon that you can use to send in with your next donation. If a donation is missed during a particular month, you will NOT receive a receipt with a return coupon for that month.

We understand that life gets busy and details can sometimes be overlooked. We will attempt to reach you regarding any missed support. We are happy to work with you on options to get caught up so that you can maintain the special relationship you have hopefully established with your sponsored child.

The success of our program depends upon our sponsors maintaining their commitments. If support for your child does not come in for more than three consecutive months and all of our attempts to contact you during that time go unanswered, your sponsorship will automatically be cancelled so that we can work to find a new sponsor to support the child.

To cancel your sponsorship please call our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI or email. We will need your name, donor ID number, your child’s name and child’s ID number.

Once you have created an online account, click the “My History” button on your main page to view all of your past donations. You may use the drop-down menu to adjust how many donations to show on each page, and/or scroll through each page by clicking on the page number or “Next” at the bottom of the current page.

You may also call our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI to request that a printed giving statement be mailed to you.

Once you have created an online account, click on the “My History” button on your main page. At the bottom of the window click the “Print Statement” button.  Enter the starting and ending dates of the range for which you would like to view your giving and click the “go” button. You may print or e-mail the giving statement by clicking on the appropriate button at the bottom of the window that opens.

You will receive a year-end giving statement for tax purposes in January for the previous year’s giving.

You may also call our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI to request that a printed giving statement be mailed to you.

One-time payments may be made by phone at 1-844-LOV-MOHI, or online, if you have a saved payment method on your account.

From your My Account page, click on the “My Child Sponsorships” bar.

On the right, select “Make a One-Time Sponsorship Contribution”, and press “Give”.

Edit the amount you would like to give, if needed, and when ready to check out, click the green “Submit” button. You can access your cart at any time by clicking the “cart” link at the very top of the webpage.

Yes ! Payments may be set up by calling our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI, or online.

From your My Account page, click on the “Saved Payments” bar and click on “Add a New Payment Option”.

If you need to set up a recurring payment for an existing payment method, please email us, or give us a call at 1-844-LOV-MOHI.

If you have just set up your online account, please note that it can sometimes take up to one business day to complete the setup of your new online account. Once setup is complete, you should be able to see your past giving history and information on any children you sponsor. If you continue to experience problems viewing information through your online account after a full business day has passed, please contact our office at 1-844-LOV-MOHI or email for assistance.