Meeting your sponsored child in person will be one of your child's favorite memories for life — and quite possibly yours, too! Compassion believes so strongly in the positive effect of you meeting your sponsored child that we will coordinate the logistics of the visit and provide a trained facilitator to accompany you. Many of our country offices support more than 20,000 sponsored children who live anywhere from a few hours' to a few days' travel from their offices. As a result, it takes some time to arrange your visit successfully.
Due to the eqrthquake crisis, all Compassion travel to Haiti is restricted until further notice. We are unable to receive individual or group visit requests to Haiti at this time. Thank you for your understanding, along with your faithful support and prayers.
Please note that due to local customs, our field countries may have limited availability to facilitate child visits during Holy Week (March 29-31, April 1-2, 2010), which precedes Easter Sunday (April 4, 2010.) Some countries, especially those in Latin America, will coincide Compassion program vacations with government school closures and cultural festivities. When we receive your individual visit request, Compassion will respond with information specific to your child's country. Thank you for your understanding.
The information below will walk you through the process of setting up a visit with your sponsored child.
Visit Planning Guidelines
- Compassion requests eight weeks' notice prior to the date of visit in order to arrange your visit. Arranging a visit may take several weeks, as we coordinate logistics between the U.S. and field office, the child development center your child attends, your child's family, and you.
- NEW! Please note for any request including a visit date March 1, 2010, and beyond, in order to ensure our children's protection and determine eligibility to interact with participants in our sponsorship programs, a simple background check is required for each visitor (over the age of 18) to pursue any visit arrangements. The nonrefundable processing fee is $30 per visitor, and payment must be received prior to pursuing visit arrangements. Once we receive your visit request, we will direct you to the Background Check Form, which must be completed and returned by each traveler no later than one week after your visit request submission.
- Compassion requires a completed Visit Request Form (see Child Visit Checklist) before contacting the country office to plan your visit.
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If you need more information, please e-mail visits@us.ci.org or call (800) 336-7542 for assistance.
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Sponsored children and their families often see a visit from their sponsor as the highlight of the year. It would be terribly disappointing to contact your child's family if your plans are not yet certain.
- Compassion requires sponsors to reimburse expenses incurred by the sponsored family or country office in facilitating your visit. These expenses may include transportation, food and possibly overnight lodging, if you decide to have the child and chaperone(s) meet you away from their home area.
Learn more about a typical child visit.
I'm ready to submit my visit request.
