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I received a letter today from Anitha in India.

Dear Sponsor,

Greetings to you. I have received your cards and photos which you sent for me, they are very nice.

Your child’s photo is very beautiful and baby is very cute and your dog’s photo is very nice to see.

Now I have been promoted from 4th standard to 5th standard. My school is 1 kilometer away from my house. I am going to school by walk. I play hide and seek game with my friend Priya.

I have an elder sister, an elder brother and a younger brother. My father is working as construction laborer.

On behalf of my parents I convey my thanks and regards to you and your family.

Thanking you

Loving Anitha

I have missed blogging about a few letters back and forth to my World Vision sponsored child, Anitha, but I have decided to start again, so here is a letter that I am sending her today. It is on the back of a postcard of Bronte Harbour.

Dear Anitha,

Today is July 7th, so Happy Birthday!! I really hope that you had a good day and that the small gifts that I sent made it to you.

July 1st was Canada Day, so Ray, Aidan and I went down to the lake to celebrate. They had lots of food, music and an outdoor market. I bought this postcard of Bronte Harbour. We love to sit and watch the sailboats.

Aidan is doing very well, he has learned to crawl and now has 3 teeth! Ray is busy with work as usual. We will be going up north to see his family in a few weeks. I am very excited about that. Tanner and Watson (the dogs) are also well. I think they wish they could go for more walks but it so hard to take them and Aidan out at the same time. They love to play with Aidan though so it is ok, especially since Aidan can move around so fast now!

I am running out of space so I better go!

Love, Shannon

Today I received my first letter back from India from my sponsored child Anitha. She drew a very cute picture of a house and a tree and a sun, as well as a person collecting water from a tap. I was so happy to receive it! Every time I go to the mailbox I hope that there is a letter from her in there.

Along with the picture, I received a letter from World Vision, providing some more information about Anitha and her family.

Anitha lives with her parents, two brothers and one sister in a slum in Bangalore. Although Bangalore, known as the Silicon Valley of India, is a major industrial and commercial center, as well as the fastest growing cosmopolitan city in India, many people lack water, shelter, education, employment and a clean environment. People migrate from the neighboring villages and states in search of work and start dwelling in very small houses in the slums in Bangalore.

Anitha’s father works as a casual laborer at a construction site and her mother is a housemaid.

Anitha is in standard III and her favourite subject is English. She likes to play with her dolls and with her friends near her home. Her favourite food is rice and dhal.

World Vision has organized the community into core groups to focus on education, health and economic development in order to bring a more holistic development to the community.

I am really looking forward to the next piece of mail already!

I have been spending some time (while recovering from my emergency appendectomy) researching a bit about the area where Anitha, my sponsor child,lives. The only information that I had to go by was the name of the project and the fact that she lives in or near Bangalore. The name of the project is “ADP Nithyajeeva”. Having no idea how to speak the language (I am assuming Hindi) I thought that Nithyajeeva was a place. After spending a great deal of time searching, I was finally able to determine that it is NOT a place, but rather it means ‘Daily Life’(special thanks to Gayathri at Ray’s work). I have resorted to assuming that Anitha lives in Bangalore until I receive a reply to my letter that I sent earlier this week.

A few weeks ago Ray and I decided to sponsor a child through World Vision. This has been something that has been on my mind for several years and I finally decided to just do it. I have several reasons for wanting to do this, most of which are very personal so I will not provide the details here.

The whole process was very easy. I just went to the World Vision website and selected the child that I wanted. I guess I have to correct myself here. The whole process from a technical point of view was very easy, however it was very hard to select the child that I wanted. There are just so many children that need help. It may be easier to fill out the form where you just select “send the me child that has been waiting the longest”.

Last week I received my package in the mail, which included the picture of our child, Anitha. She is a cute little 8 year old from India. I know she lives near Bangalore but I’m not sure if she lives in the city or in a village outside the city. She lives with both of her parents who work but they do not make enough money to get by. Currently that is all the information that I have. I am really looking forward to learning more about her!

Today I wrote her a letter. This is what I wrote:

Dear Anitha,

Love, Shannon and Ray.

I wrote the letter on a nice card that I found at home and will be sending along pictures of Ray and I, as well as pictures of Tanner and Watson. I send the letters to World Vision who will then translate the letter and send the translation as well as the original on to Anitha. I think it will take a couple of weeks to reach her.

I really like the work that World Vision does because they help the communities to be self-sufficient.

Hopefully I will hear back from Anitha and I will post about it here.