Letters: Editing/Content Cancel Title is required

I'm interested in learning more about CI's procedure for editing sponsor letters and its policy for determining appropriate content regarding religion. Editing. For paper letters, is inappropriate content redacted and the letter sent and for an online letter is inappropriate content deleted and the letter sent. In either situation is the sponsor notified? Appropriate Content Regarding Religion. When either the child/family are Christian and the sponsor is non-Christian (Hindu, Muslim, Jewish etc.) or the child is non-Christian and the sponsor Christian, is it appropriate for the sponsor to write factual information about his/her belief system? What religious information, written by sponsors, would CI consider a 'red flag' for proselytizing?

It doesn't exactly answer your question, but I don't think they edit online letters. I've had 3 letters returned over time. One was asking some questions of a 12 year old about his living conditions that was kind of unfair to him and should have been asked to CI instead. The others were about going into too much detail about pending visits that hadn't been finalized. They don't want the child to be disappointed. I grumbled on those but I get CI's point.

With respect to religion, I've never raised it personally. I just assumed it would be best never to mention it as the kids are all very religious and I'm not. They've actually made me much less cynical about religion than I was before, I very much appreciate how important it is to them,

Wow, that's a lot of questions and I'll do my best to answer them all. CIKC tries to forward as many letters as we can, with as little editing as possible. CIKC never redacts info and sends the letter to the SOA, as this would immediately create suspicion between the families and staff, placing the staff in a very awkward position, since they wouldn't know what was redacted.  

And, since we don't ask the children what religion they are when we enroll them in the program, we really don't have any idea what their religious beliefs are. The same goes for the sponsors, so if a sponsor chooses to write to their child and tell them about their own personal religious beliefs or holidays they do or don’t celebrate, we would never stop the letter from being sent to the child.  

However, if the sponsor should send tracts, or other material which could be viewed as proselytizing by the families or our staff, then we would not send those items to the SOA and would notify the sponsor.  Or, if the sponsor should write a letter telling the child:  he/she needed to convert to another religion/ their religion is wrong/ or they needed to go to a certain church, then these letters would be stopped in CIKC and returned to the sponsor. 

The majority of letters we “red flag” are those that wish the child a happy holiday and say they sent a donation for the holiday. If the donation was an EG for the child, or went to a holiday fund, we’ll send the letter – without any edits – to the SOA with a cover letter explaining the situation (EG/gift fund).  The staff is then able to explain the situation to the family. Or, those in which the sponsor includes their direct contact information (and the youth has not graduated from our program). In this case, we send the letter back to the sponsor with an explanation – or, if the graduation will be soon, we’ll hold the letter to send after it occurs. 

We do edit letters if the address is not in the body of the letter and can easily be removed, we’ll trim it off or mark it out with a black marker and cover it with a sticker – cause we really like putting smiley faces, rainbows, princesses and Spiderman stickers on the letters to the kids. It brightens our days too. 

Thanks Debbie, I appreciate your detailed and comprehensive answer!