Letters Cancel Se requiere un título

Benny and Jun

I look forward to seeing your post and knowing how your boys are doing. I'm saddened that you won't be posting anymore. Also I believe visits should start again. For awhile I agreed for no visits but I had my visit canceled because of covid and that child now has graduated. Also I'm ready to start traveling again

I visited sponsored children in Honduras through another org in January ​this year (that organisation has been allowing visits since 2021) I'll be going again in June next year and it's sadly looking like my CI boys will miss out on a visit again. I'm wondering who it is that doesn't want visits to restart as I find it hard to imagine the parents of the children in the program opposing visits from sponsors. All of the families and people in the communities I visited were extremely welcoming and thrilled to have visitors to their community​. During my visit a whole 11 months ago, covid was already being treated as just another flu over there

I think @debbies did say that visits are open in all the areas except for Zambia, Manila, US, and one area in Ecuador. So you should contact the care team to see if you could visit! :)

My sister and I are thinking of visiting Guatemala summer of 2023. That will give me time to save money and maybe things will get better

I've been staying in Guatemala for almost 2 months now and yes, there are still many people wearing masks when entering certain businesses or on public transit and to a lesser degree while walking on the street. In a few places people are asked to have their temperature taken by a machine and/or to use hand sanitizer when they enter (mostly in banks, restaurants and larger stores).

Other than that, though, COVID-19 is not really an issue anymore as far as I can tell. I get the sense that even the masks are mostly worn out of habit or politeness rather than genuine ​fear or concern, like it was back in 2020.

Oh, I must have missed this, I really hope this is the case with Honduras! Thanks so much

Checking in for updates on sending physical letters to our children? The notebook for Brenda is getting really thick, and contains letters dated all the way back to December 4, 2020. I'd REALLY love to be able to send it to her.

Hello @Saddare,
According to a post from @Debbies if you send a physical letter to CIKC, it will be scanned and sent to the Field Office electronically. I believe that @Debbies will let us know when physical mail will go to the Field Offices again but in my humble opinion, I think the cost savings realized by sending letters electronically will make this the new reality for communicating with our children. I don't see it changing anytime soon.
Just my opinion.  Have a great day and good weekend.

I saw that post and if cost is the issue and they won't go back to actually forwarding the physical letters to their destination countries, then I think there is a better solution. The batch of letters I sent last month (letters for 6 sponsored children in separate envelopes with 11 photos each all put into a larger envelope and mailed to CIKC) cost me about $11 to send and they told me at the post office that it could take a while to get to Kansas City. (I'm in Toronto.)

If CI is just going to scan those letters and forward them electronically to the field offices, then it would make more sense for me to scan the letters at home and e-mail them to CI rather than physically mailing them which takes more time and costs money. I already scan my own letters before mailing them out and keep the scans on my computer for reference, so it's kind of wasteful to mail them if the scans are what CI really needs in order to transmit the letters to whatever country the children live in and then they will print them locally. 

I'm not sure what CI is going to do with the photos I mailed, but I could send those to CI in digital format as well, since they were taken with a digital camera, rather than getting them printed (costs money) and mailing them to CI (also costs money) only to have them scanned back into digital format. LOL

At least if I scan them at home I can make sure the quality is good enough, because I've gotten scanned letters from CI that were barely legible.

I realize this current "mail letters to CIKC ​to be scanned" process was developed with sponsors who could not send stuff digitally during the pandemic in mind, but if it's going to be implemented on a wider scale then it may be worth looking into adding a feature on the website where sponsors can upload letters/photos (within reason) if that would be a workable solution. If that's not feasible then I would be happy to e-mail them in. I just feel like the current process may save CI money, but on the sponsors' end it's kind of wasteful. If CI is going to digitalize what I mail in then I would rather send it to CI digitally to begin with.

I must agree with you.

It is my understanding that CI will also scan the photos and send them electronically as well. I also seem to recall @Debbies saying that CIKC will hold on to things sent to them and maybe forward them in the future. I know that she will read this on Tuesday (Monday is a Federal Holiday in the states) and give us all a definitive answer to this. 

As @Debbies would suggest fill out a web feedback form with your suggestion to add a way for us to digitize and mail things to CIKC.  Maybe if enough of us make the suggestion, they will implement it. I always feel that there is no harm in asking/suggesting a change to make things better for all.

As I said, this is what I recall reading in the threads.  Since the pandemic, I have been doing everything through the CI web site. I know that I, like you, would like to send and receive physical letters, I think they make a greater impact and strengthen the bonds we form with those we sponsor.

Yes, as Debbie mentioned, handwritten letters sponsors send us are being scanned and sent electronically to the field office. This new system benefits any sponsor who prefers to handwrite their letters, but especially those sponsors who do not have access to and/or do not know how to operate a computer. 

If any of you like, Saddare, have been holding onto handwritten letters yourself and your child does not live in Ecuador, have your considered sending them to your child as part of a direct package? Contact the Care Team for your child's agency address.

I would, but I just checked online and even sending a regular envelope from Canada to Honduras with DHL would cost me $150 - that's about $120 USD. So sending 7 of those would cost nearly a thousand dollars.

@Gabor2023,
I know that DHL, UPS, etc. are expensive even for domestic shipments. Have you looked into Canada Post. Here is in the US I used USPS to send boxes to Ecuador for around $25 (that was more than ten years ago before customs got really crazy there). Canada Post may be more economical than DHL, do the same job, just on a slower time frame.
Just a suggestion, and my experience.

I didn't know DPs were an option again! I will reach out to the Care Team for Brenda's SOA address--she's in Guatemala. Thank you, Ramfam! :-)