We are thrilled to announce our new partnership with Muddy Kids! Thanks to their generosity, Muddy Kids will be donating a portion of funds from each Muddy Kids event in 2025 to Children Incorporated.
“We believe that Children Incorporated’s incredible work aligns perfectly with our values of promoting health, joy, and family unity.”
About Muddy Kids
Muddy Kids is a 1.5–2.2 mile adventure event series for families and kids ages 5–15, with fun and challenging obstacles, mud, and entertainment for the whole family. Muddy Kids doesn’t focus on the fastest times or competitions; the focus is fun, with obstacle courses made for walking, crawling, climbing, sliding, balancing, and laughing all in the mud! Muddy Kids is the perfect event to reconnect, strengthen relationships, have fun, get active, get muddy, and bond as a family.
“We believe that Children Incorporated’s incredible work aligns perfectly with our values of promoting health, joy, and family unity,” said Lizhan, Senior Marketing Manager at Muddy Kids. “Together, we can make a great impact by supporting Children Incorporated while offering participants a fun and meaningful day out.”
We are so grateful for this wonderful partnership. To find out more and see if Muddy Kids will be in your area this upcoming season, visit their website today!
After leaving India, our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, traveled to Sri Lanka to visit our two affiliated sites in the country. His first stop was the Touch a Life with Hope Center in Colombo, the capital. Here, girls from low-income families are pursuing higher education thanks to support from their sponsors.
“They indicated that without those benefits from Children Incorporated sponsors, they would have a hard time completing their education, let alone thinking about higher education,” said Luis.
Luis’ Visit
“The Touch a Life with Hope Center is a home for girls in Colombo. The Ceylon Association supports the home, but Children Incorporated sponsorship provides additional support for other needs for the girls such as food, school supplies, and clothes, which is essential to their well-being since funds from the Ceylon Association are limited,” explained Luis.
“Children from the local neighborhood are enrolled in the Children Incorporated program at the home, and they come to Touch a Life twice a month to collect food, school supplies, clothing, or shoes provided by our sponsors. We have also provided additional funding for mosquito nets and, during the pandemic, hygiene items that were very beneficial to all the girls that lived in the home and others enrolled in the Children Incorporated program.”
Looking ahead to higher education
All of the children enrolled at Touch a Life with Hope Center met with me during my visit and shared information on the benefits they receive. They indicated that without those benefits from Children Incorporated sponsors, they would have a hard time completing their education, let alone thinking about higher education,” said Luis.
“The home is located in a good area of the city, adequate, and provides a nurturing environment for the girls. The building houses two large dorms, an adequate kitchen and dining hall, and a section for administration. In the middle, there is a small landscaped area, and in the back, they have toilets and washrooms. To the side of the administration area, there is another section with trees, flowers, and grass that allows everyone to enjoy some quiet time and relaxation. I very much enjoyed my visit and seeing how well the girls were doing at the home.”
You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship.
As he finishes his visit to our affiliated sites in Sri Lanka, our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, meets with our volunteer coordinator, Dr. Rodrigo, at the Chrishanti Lama Sevana in Colombo, which she established many years ago out of her home in order to help some of the most impoverished children in her own neighborhood.
Learning about the Center
“The Chrishanti Center is located in the Kirulapone area of Colombo, in the capital city. This area is strikingly divided between a well-developed area of Colombo and entwined slums for housing for low-income families. The Chrishanti Center is located at the border of both regions in one of the slums. Here, Dr. Nalini Rodrigo, from a well-to-do family, wanted to support those in need many years ago. She was initially serving children from her and her husband’s own home, and then later, a local community provided a small plot of land in a poorly developed area to be used for the center,” said Luis.
“Many other children are also in permanent working positions because of what our sponsorship program support allowed them to do in school and university,” said Luis.
“They started the center very modestly with a makeshift hut to meet the needs of the children and families and provide Children Incorporated support to enrolled children there. A few years ago, we convinced Dr. Rodrigo to upgrade the facility, with intentions to continue providing sponsorship support but also to give more stability to the families, tend to other needs, and increase aid to those who needed more support. As a result, a small two-story building was constructed. Here, they decided to use the first floor as a daycare center to cater to the children of mothers who work during the day. The Children Incorporated sponsored children would use this area to receive monthly benefits as well. The children received mostly food and school supplies. Everyone liked the center, as now it was more of their place.”
The importance of education
“In Sri Lanka, education is of very personal importance, as the literacy rate in this nation is up in the 90th percentile, and everyone wants to graduate from high school, and no one wants to quit education. Most parents of Children Incorporated sponsored children have never had the opportunity to attend high school. Still, every child in our program has finished high school, and many have participated in a university or a technical school. A child named Gayan went to school to study for a Systems Engineering career, and he now works in a big IT company in Colombo; he still helps his parents, and he is very involved with the Chrishanti Center as an advocate and teacher in his spare time. He was our guide during the visit. Many other children are also in permanent working positions because of what our sponsorship program support allowed them to do in school and university,” said Luis.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the center and felt, as always, that Dr. Rodrigo was doing an excellent job of providing for the children in our program through sponsorship support.”
You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship.
In the fall of 2024, our Director of Inernational Programs, Lius Bourdet, and our Internatonal Programs Specialist, Yefiny Mena, visited our affiliated sites in Guatemala and El Salvador to meet with our volunteer coordinators and sponsored children, and hear more about how our sponsors are change the lives of children and families in need in Central America. Today, we hear from Luis about their visit to Santa Isabel Ana Seton in Guatemala City, where Sister Ana Juilia Herndandez welcomed them warmly and spoke with them about how our Feeding Program Fund is helping kids she is looking over.
Visiting with Sister Julia
“Santa Isabel Ana Seton is located in Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. It opened its doors to children in 2006, and since then, Sor Ana Julia Hernandez has been our coordinator,” said Luis.
“Out of the 390 students attending the school at the moment, 90 of these students are participating in our sponsorship program. Santa Isabel Ana Seton students also benefit from our feeding program every month, where the coordinator selects 25 children out of the 90 participants in Children Incorporated to provide them with nutritious food. The children selected are the most in need, as Sister Julia has conducted home visits and met with all of their parents.”
“This school is located in the center of Guatemala City and absorbs students from the periphery and red zone areas of the city (zones of low-income families, where common crime is always present). The school has a program that goes from Kindergarten to 9th grade. Santa Isabel Ana Seton School is a well-cared-for school, where children feel safe and enjoy a clean environment, conducted for education. They have ample space inside the compound, and it is all enclosed and protected. All children here seem happy and eager to learn in school, and the children on the Children Incorporated program were very polite while we met them. They wanted to present a small program with culture and songs and dances from Guatemala for us, and we truly enjoy it!” said Luis.
“The school has a series of buildings in a rather large plot of land right in the middle of the city, which is very unusual. There is one building dedicated to kindergarten, one for primary education classes, and one for middle school education. They also have other small buildings, one with a kitchen, another with a facility for a food preparation skill program, and a garment-making program, which were implemented with the support of Children Incorporated a few years ago. These two programs are very important as they prepare and provide such skills to older children, as well as their parents and relatives, so that they can increment income with the skill. The skill training programs are a one-year program of learning and on-hands practice for them to be completed, and they are very comprehensive and prepare the participants well.”
Children Incorporated’s monthly support at Santa Isabel Ana Seton covers school fees and other needs, such as school supplies at the beginning of the year and sometimes shoes and clothing, mainly during the holidays and when sponsors send additional gifts. Yefiny and I met with Sister Julia after we toured the school and left very satisfied with all the programs and support the children received, thanks mainly to our sponsors and donors.
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Shelley Callahan |
It had already been a fantastic day visiting two of our affiliated sites in New Orleans, and we still had one more to do before returning to our hotel for the evening. Shayne, Kris, Renée, and I made our way from Foundation Preparatory Academy to Langston Hughes Academy in the Fairgrounds neighborhood of the city. When we arrived, we met Maria outside of the school, and we all went inside together, where we were greeted by our volunteer coordinator, Nicole, a soft-spoken yet very enthusiastic young woman who excitedly offered to take us on a tour of the school before we had our meeting and met with some of our sponsored children.
Because of their sponsors, they feel confident coming to school, enjoy learning, and, therefore, have ambitions and dreams for their futures.
Visiting our last school of the day
Langston Hughes Academy serves roughly 800 children from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade in an extremely large facility. The building itself spans over an entire city block and has everything from a cafeteria to a soccer field to a farm with goats and chickens. As Nicole showed us the gymnasium and a few of the classrooms, she explained that the students at her school, not unlike the other schools we work with in New Orleans, were most in need of basic resources such as hygiene items to get through the day.
More specifically, she said that there are students who come to school that have such poor hygiene that they distract the other students from learning and are removed from class and offered a shower at the school. Still, they don’t have a clean uniform to change into, so the problem persists for many of them.
The issue with poor hygiene isn’t only disruptive to children’s education, but it’s embarrassing for them and adds to the emotional stress they already feel. As Nicole explained to us, many of her students witness gun violence and have family members who have died — even other students have died, and the children are traumatized, living in fear and being scared something bad will happen to them, too.
Thankfully, because of Nicole and her background in counseling, her students can come to her to receive grief support and get hygiene items, some clothing items, and school supplies. Nicole also mentioned that our sponsorship program is a huge help to her students, and she wouldn’t be able to provide for many of them without their sponsors. She uses sponsor funds to buy soap, shampoo, and uniforms for the kids so they can stay clean, as well as rain jackets and long pants for rain and cold weather so they don’t skip school because they don’t have appropriate clothes to wear.
More needs to be met
Nicole mentioned that she would love funds to buy bedding for children and books for the scholastic book fair, and Renée happily mentioned that those would be perfect items for her to request through our Hope In Action grants program.
We ended our tour by visiting the school’s library, where we sat and chatted with Nicole. A few of our sponsored children then arrived to meet with us. We met Trisha*, who does really well in school and loves math. We also met Elenore, who loves going to English class and wants to be a hairstylist when she grows up.
Getting to meet these special girls was very rewarding. There is nothing like actually getting to know the students our sponsors help and understanding that because of their sponsors, they feel confident coming to school, enjoy learning, and, therefore, have ambitions and dreams for their futures.
*Children’s names changed to protect their privacy.
You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in that is available for sponsorship.
After our wonderful visit to Arthur Ashe Charter School in New Orleans, it was time to move on to our second affiliated site — Foundation Preparatory Academy, which serves kindergarten through 8th-grade students from all over the city.
Renée, Kris, Shayne, and I all got into Shayne’s car to make the short drive from the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans to the Fairgrounds neighborhood, where Foundation Preparatory Academy was located.
Those issues at home had a lot to do with living in impoverished households, where food was scarce, and overcrowded housing was common.
On the way, Renée explained to me that the site coordinator at the school had left the position and that our partner, Communities In Schools Gulf South (CISGS), was currently in the process of hiring a replacement. In the meantime, the Director of Student Services with CISGS, Amy, who was very familiar with working at Foundation Preparatory Academy, was going to meet us to talk more about how our sponsorship program was helping children at this school.
Meeting with Amy
When we arrived, we met with Maria in the parking lot, then we all checked in at the front office, and Amy greeted us with a student in our sponsorship program, Luke.* We started our visit by following Luke and Amy to the school’s resource center, where during her time working at the school, Amy would pull students out of class who needed to take some time away from other students and either talk with Amy or play games and relax.
When we walked in, the first thing I noticed was the shelves of books, puzzles, and other toys — inviting games that would make any child happy to have the freedom to play with for 45 minutes or an hour at a time. As we all grabbed seats at the round table in the middle of the room, Luke helped himself to a few puzzles he wanted to work on while we all chatted together.
Renée asked Luke what he thought of Foundation Preparatory Academy, and he said it was a wonderful school. He had been there for a year and loved it a lot. As Luke worked on his puzzles with intense concentration, Amy explained that a lot of her work with the students at the school supported them with problem solving, whether with things like puzzles or games or helping them talk through issues with other students or issues they have at home.
Those issues at home, as Amy told us, had a lot to do with living in impoverished households, where food was scarce and overcrowded housing was common. The kids often didn’t sleep well and would nap on the bus on the way to school, but then they would still be exhausted at the beginning of the school day.
It was great to hear that thanks to our donors, we were able to help Luke have some quiet and peaceful time at home, just like he can get at school with the help of amazing people like Amy.
They also were often anxious or traumatized, having witnessed a lot of violence in their young lives. Amy mentioned that this often resulted in kids not having the skills to be patient with themselves and others, and so bringing them into the resource center to relax, cool off, or have some time alone with Amy was the foundation of a loving environment — and one that Luke obviously felt very comfortable in.
Luke as our tour guide
Once Luke successfully finished his puzzles, Amy asked him if he would like to take us on a tour of the school before he returned to class, and he excitedly said he would. He showed us the lunchroom, library, hallways, and classrooms through the school building; Amy explained to us as we walked that 100% of the students at Foundation Prep received free lunches, which helps a lot with providing basic resources for the kids. Additionally, she said that without help from our sponsors, many of the children in the school would only have one school uniform for a whole year and no jacket or long pants to wear during the winter.
As our tour ended, we said goodbye to Luke, and he headed back to his classroom. Amy escorted us back to the front office. As we thanked Amy for the wonderful visit, she paused and said that she wanted us to know that Luke and his brothers and sisters had had no beds or linens in their home at all, and Children Incorporated provided funds to help them get those items so they could all hopefully get a better night’s sleep. It was great to hear that thanks to our donors, we were able to help Luke have some quiet and peaceful time at home, just like he can get at school with the help of amazing people like Amy.
You can sponsor a child in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in that is available for sponsorship.
