A Visit to My Sponsored Child: A Life Changing Experience for Both of Us

I've sponsored several children through different sponsorship organizations like Christian Children's Fund and Children International. I also sponsored five children through PLAN USA and one of them was in Thailand. While I was sponsoring her, my parents and I took a one month trip to Thailand and one of the things I planned to do while I was in Thailand was to visit my sponsored child. I contacted PLAN and asked if I could visit my sponsored child, and they set up the visit with no problem at all. Many child sponsors want to visit a sponsored child, but I was surprised it was as easy to arrange as it was.

On the second week I was in Thailand, we flew to Chiang Rai, which is in the northern part of Thailand. This was the closest place to my sponsored child's village, so PLAN USA arranged for a mini van to pick me up along with a Thai translator, as obviously my sponsored child did not speak English. The mini van picked me up at our hotel right after breakfast as the trip to my sponsored child's village was going to be a 3 hour drive.

We traveled on paved roads for the most part, once stopping at a gas station for a snack and a bathroom break and once for a police roadblock. Thailand has problems with drug traffickers and wildlife poachers in the north, so you find police roadblocks on most major roads. After quick questioning though, and seeing that I was Western, we were waved through very quickly. Soon after this, we left the paved roads behind and headed out into the hills. Driving on dirt roads, with field after field of rice paddies and subsistence farmers bamboo huts, it began to sink in how poor and out of touch with 'my world' this child was going to be.

When we finally pulled into my sponsored child's village, the first thing I noticed was the trash. It was everywhere. The translator told me that, obviously, there was no trash pickup in these isolated areas and, because they hadn't experienced anything any different, the response by the villagers was just to leave the trash where they stood.