My sister-in-law and her family did something extra special this summer. She and her family raised money for her sponsored child (as part of the [1] Children’s International program) and went to visit her in Mexico (Guadalajara).

For those of you who don’t know what [1] Children’s International is, it is a non-profit organization tailored towards uniting underprivileged kids with those who want to sponsor them.

At Children International, in our efforts to fight poverty, we unite sponsors with children around the world – bringing different nations and cultures together.

The photos she showed us of her sponsored child’s house and their living conditions just reminds us of how lucky we are to have a simple comforts in life like a proper house, clothes, electricity, water, food and transportation … things we all take for granted. It was to an extent that they didn’t have electricity or water and literally just stayed within 4 walls with a wooden door without proper toilets, sewage systems and showers. The village communities had a main area to get water each day and they had to fill their buckets up everyday. There were no proper roads into the housing shelters too and everyone had to walk through stone rubbles and overgrowth. (see picture below — those buildings on both sides of the stone rubble are actually houses!)

My sister-in-law and family certainly made their sponsored child and her brother happy by taking them out to McDonald’s for lunch. With that and the many toys and clothes given by them and friends, they certainly had the summer of their lives. Their smiles that were caught on camera were priceless.

I tip my hat to [1] Children’s International too for building a nice community building for the sponsored kids with a playground, dental facilities, computer/ teaching rooms and a library. Donations collected also went towards buying more books for their community library. And thanks to the many Mexican social workers for volunteering to take care of more than 1000 kids at a time and Microsoft for donating brand new computers for them to use.

I saw the video footage my sister-in-law took and it just breaks my heart to see those adorable kids and their families live in such a state. You just can’t imagine it is for real until you see it. We are so very lucky — the next time I gripe and complain about not having something, I’ll just have to think about the many thousands of kids and their families out there that are worse off than me and have literally nothing.