Deisy

I want to go to Colombia. I sponsor a six-year-old girl named Deisy through an organization called Compassion International. For less than forty dollars a month, I can be sure that Deisy has clean water, medical attention, food, and schooling. I've sponsored her for a little over a year, and it was probably the best decision I've ever made. I love kids. I love working with them at my job, I love babysitting them, and I love talking to them. After hearing about the poverty and child labor problems all over the world, I wanted to help.
Really, I just want Deisy to be able to go to school and have food to eat and have the opportunity to live. An estimated 134 million 15-24 year olds are illiterate. Roughly 884 million people do not have access to clean water. More than six million children die from malnutrition each year. I am determined to make sure that Deisy doesn't become another statistic.
I have her letters that she writes me hanging on my door in my bedroom. The pictures she draws for me are hanging over my bed. She's so cute, she's got a doll named Margarita that she draws pictures of all the time, and she writes that she wishes she could show me her doll in real life. My favorite picture of all time is the one she sent me a few months ago, of two stick figures holding hands, named Sarah and Deisy, with Margarita beside Deisy of course.
I can't send her actual gifts, like a jump rope or a new doll, but I can send her whatever can fit in a standard size envelope and still be flat. So I usually just send her postcards and explain about my college and such. She asks me in every single letter to send another photo of myself. She says she has a collection that she shows to all her friends. Her mother wrote me and told me about how much I mean to Deisy. I can't even explain how good it feels to hear that I am directly changing the life of a little girl. That I mean the world to a little girl in a far away country. I want to go so badly to visit her, which is entirely possible. The organization offers several trips to bring sponsors and children together. I think I'm going to wait until she's around ten or eleven until I visit her, and hopefully the area that she lives in will be safer for Americans at that point. I'm going to buy her a jump rope and a hula hoop, because those are favorite things to do.
I am only her sponsor until she is eighteen, but I hope to support her for my lifetime. She's my little girl, and I love her.