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Has anyone kept in contact with their child after they graduated from the program? Did you write letters, or email? Were there any barriers such as language?

My oldest girl will be graduating fairly soon (2-3yrs) and I'm curious as to how this works.

Hi Cbrown46, I myself have never had a child graduate from the program yet...I know you get to send a last letter with your contact information (address, email, facebook, etc.) but I think very few people have actually been able to keep in touch with their kids after graduation. I think it may be partly due to language barriers and possibly not having computer access. But I would love to hear if anyone has had good success keeping in touch and could give the rest of us some pointers, as my oldest is 16 and I would love to be able to keep in touch with her after she graduates from CI! Great question.....

Yeah, it will be a while before any of mine graduate, but I hope we can keep in touch somehow...

I don't have a child who graduated, but who left the program altogether. Under those circumstances, CI has no involvement in the contact and does not prohibit it. One of my children in Columbia seems to have limited internet access, which they used to find me on FB. The family has not asked for any outside assistance and has instead shared pictures of Daysela now and writes me about once a week to share how they are doing.

The family writes in Spanish, which I understand for the most part. When I don't, I use Google Translate. Sometimes even that kicks back a nonsense statement and I simply ask them to phrase it differently because I don't understand. So far, we are able to communicate fine in that way!

Brooke:

That sounds like a wonderful set up. I understand minimal Spanish but plan to learn more in the near future. Hopefully then I will find a way to keep in touch

I talk to all three of my grads and their families almost every day. We talk about our days and share photos. We use Facebook. They all had existing accounts and they found me after graduating CI. It's been great.

Thanks John! That's really encouraging!

When my eldest, from India, was soon to graduate, I asked her how she would feel about remaining in touch afterward. She sounded very enthusiastic: "Please bless me for my entire life. I will remember you forever." (I did not give my contact info at that time since it is not allowed while the sponsorship is in effect.) I informed CI that I would like to remain in contact afterwards if she was willing. She left the program a little early (age 18) because she married and moved to her husband's house outside the program area, but, at last report, her husband and in-laws supported her plans to continue her college education.

I provided my regular mail address (I was worried that phone or e-mail might bring me contacts from strangers), and her address and phone # was provided to me. This was at her husband's home since "it was found that no one [at her college] could be contacted or relied upon" (!!) In her last letter to me (part of an SNG thank-you since I and others contributed to a fundraiser for her college) she thanked me for the support. Last I heard, she was in her second year of a 3-year course in Science with Honors in Mathematics.

In my first letter to her, I neglected to include the "PIN #" in the address, so it probably never made it there. I was confused because, here, a PIN number is for something like a bank account, to be closely guarded. But in India, it means "postal identification number" and is like a zip code here. So I re-sent her that letter once I figured it out, and sent a second one (this was several months later).

It has been some time since then (around a year) and she has not written. I hope that it is just that she is busy with a demanding course schedule and her new marriage and that she has not had time to write. I do not think there would be much of a language barrier, since she's in college, and Indian students have to pass a rigorous English exam to get in.

I hope that her new family does not object to her remaining in contact with me. My other concern is that some unavoidable circumstance might have prevented her from finishing her college education--in which case she might be embarrassed to tell me, since I put so much effort into raising the funds.

Hopefully I will someday get a letter from her letting me know how she is doing, and also what she thought of the farewell DP I sent: two books, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

This is something I was also wondering since my oldest girl will be 17 next month. I would love to be able to stay in contact with her since I've been with her all her teen years and she was the one that started me on this amazing path!