By sponsoring a child through Food for the Hungry, you are investing in the physical and spiritual development of your sponsored child and their community. As a sponsor, it is very important that your actions earn the trust of families, leaders and the community by maintaining standards for protecting their children.

Physical Protection
In-person visits to sponsored children

We are glad to facilitate a personal visit between you and the child you sponsor. We do, however, require that sponsors are pre-approved before visiting the community. Approved sponsors must also sign a statement that they are in agreement with Food for the Hungry's Visitor Guidelines. As part of the approval process, we require a background check on visitors who come in contact with children in our programs. Read more about the visitor application process and guidelines.

Preserve Dignity
Photos of the child

Food for the Hungry is committed to protecting the dignity of all the children and families in our programs. It is not permitted to reproduce or publish a photo of a sponsored child without written permission from Food for the Hungry. Contact Child Sponsor Services for more info.

Correspondence and Electronic Media
We encourage you to write

A sponsor's encouragement via correspondence and prayer truly makes a difference. We hope you choose to start a friendship through writing to your sponsored child. To protect our sponsored children and to insure that content aligns with our vision, mission and values, all correspondence between the sponsor and child passes through Food for the Hungry for review. For your confidentiality and protection, letters should not reveal street addresses, e-mail addresses, social networking user names, or cell phone numbers.

Web and other electronic media
New social media sites such as Facebook are unregulated and susceptible to fraud. Therefore, if you are contacted through electronic media by your child or a friend or relative of the child, we recommend that you do not respond. Food for the Hungry is exploring the possibility of creating a secure electronic communication environment where sponsors and children can converse safely.