Electricity questions Cancel Title is required

Hello Friends! I see this is a very old post, so I am not sure my comment will be seen but here it is: Does anyone know how electricity is purchased? Can we pay for a full year of electricity, or does it have to be purchased month to month? If month to month, can sponsors just add this amount to monthly giving or does it have to be in form of an EG? My concern is, if I have to pay month to month, would I have to pay $100 or more, have a CI rep go out, and go through the whole process of an EG every month? There has to be an easier way to help with utilities, no? 

For these types of questions, I suggest going on Live Chat and asking someone from CI for an official answer, rather than asking other sponsors who can only give "unofficial" answers. 

It is nice that you are considering this for the family. You would want to start with an inquiry with CI. The house may not be wired for electricity. Electricity may never have been run to the house. If the family doesn't own the home it further complicates things. Solar may be an alternative but I know two people volunteering in Africa and they both have solar, one uses it and one does not. The one that doesn't use it is due to the attention and elevated status it would represents in the community which is not always a good thing. The CI inquiry will access the situation and you may find that electricity may not be as important to the family as some other need.

Are you sure there are utilities in the area of the houses your sponsored children live in?  I see from your profile photos: One child in Columbia and one in Zambia.  You are thinking about giving the gift of electricity. You have golden hearts, but is that attainable? Is that realistic?   In both Columbia and Zambia, those struggling with poverty mostly rent, their homes are not their own.  Their landlords are unconcerned about basic services because basic services are not part of life for the very poor.  You can go to Google Image or another search engine and look at the areas where CI children and their families live...there are very few utility polls.  In many places, there are no streets, just dirt paths between shacks, no addresses on their homes, no glass windows (just cloth-draped openings), no doors.  None of the children/youths I sponsor have water in their homes.  Many have meals cooked on stone or earthen ovens; In Zambia, all are using mbaula stoves which are small, charcoal-based metal baskets.  Charcoal is a major household cost in the compounds of Lusaka, which is why when you send an EG ( over $100 USD Extra Monetary Gift ) they often choose bundles of charcoal. Yes, check with CI to see if your two are exceptions. All sponsors can do is share what we know, and that is: These families are very, very, very poor, every day is a survival challenge.  Some give their children warm water for breakfast because there is not enough food for three meals a day.

Rachel, My heart broken to hear you say.. " Some give their children warm water for breakfast because there is not enough food for three meals a day ”. Zambia is the only country I’m yet to sponsor from, so with your observations, how do I find a child living there in extreme poverty?

Chelaka!  The stats say any CI Zambian child or youth you choose is extremely poor. Fourteen million people in Zambia live on less than one dollar a day.  Around 65% of Zambians are described as "suffering from poverty." Children International helps those who live in the compounds of Lusaka, Zambia.  Everyone in the compounds is poor -- not our definition of poor -- in rich countries "poor" means things like unable to pay bills on time, can't afford college etc.  The World Health Organization's definition of undernourished , that definition of poor; the only source of water is tainted water from public faucets, that kind of poor is the poor of Lusaka's compounds.

Thank you for all of this insight, friends! I was basing this question off of the earlier thread where one sponsor asked what the different explanations for electricity mean. Both of my children have "Available but not affordable" electricity, which apparently means their homes are set up for electricity but their families cannot afford to pay for it. Going off of what the previous conversation suggested, it's just a matter of money. 

You are kind-hearted people, I applaud you.  But when CI lists: "available but not affordable" about a utility in a poverty-stricken area,  I am baffled.  What does that really mean?   I live in rural Southern Illinois.  Cell phone coverage is "available" but I am at the edge of coverage, between towers.  To use a cell, I would have to march to the top of my long, uphill driveway and make my calls outside in the rain (or battling mosquitoes)   Cable TV is also "available" if I pay for the cable company to run a special line to my home...after I pay that startup cost, my minimum monthly cable bill:  around eighty dollars a month.  Call CI, they are wonderful people, ask them: what do they mean by "available but not affordable" in the specific situations of your sponsored children/youths.

rgfischoff:  That's a good question and I never thought about it in those terms.  I live in Southern Indiana and there are areas here that don't have access to certain items because of location.  My sister lives in one of them.  She can't get cable because the cable company stopped running the line about a mile from her house.  So does available but not affordable mean they could get it but can't afford the bills or that there would be an extra cost to get the service run to their house in addition to paying the monthly bill?  If I run across this in the future with a sponsor kid, I'll have to remember to ask this question.

@rgfischoff you're right to advise to contact the Care Team so we can look into the details more. Because like you and @queenofthenerds point out, it could be either situation. The family can have electricity but they can't afford to maintain the connection or that the extra cost to have the service established in their house in addition to maintaining the connection are both making it difficult for the family.