Letter Writing Process

You’ve written a special letter to your sponsored child—now how does it get into their hands? It’s quite a journey!

1 Letters from supporters to their sponsored children arrive every weekday at the Compassion Australia head office in Newcastle—about 500 a day.

2. Letters from sponsors are sorted by a dedicated team of staff and volunteers into pigeon holes for each country.

3. Letters are tracked electronically. Scanning barcodes on the letterhead provided by Compassion makes this process faster, but sponsors are welcome to use their own paper and write their supporter number and their child’s number on the letter.

4. Letters are packaged and mailed weekly direct to the different Compassion country offices where they are then sorted according to the country’s different child development centres.

5. Letters are usually mailed from the country office to the individual child development centres, but sometimes a project facilitator will deliver mail in person to centres in remote areas, which can take some time.

7. When children write letters to their sponsors, these letters are sent from their child development centre to the country office. Here they are translated into English (if they have not already been translated at the centre) and checked to ensure that children have contributed to the letters either by writing or drawing. They are then sent to the Compassion Global Ministry Centre in the US.

8. Child letters arrive at the Compassion International Global Ministry Centre in Colorado, US, where they are tracked, sorted and then mailed to the different partner country offices.

9. Child letters arrive at the Compassion Australia head office where they are scanned into a database for tracking. Letters are collated into envelopes by a team of staff and volunteers, and then mailed to sponsors.