Widow Sponsorship
About $1 a Day
Connecting with a Burundian widow and her family through sponsorship profoundly changes lives. What war has destroyed, you can help restore.
You can extend healing, dignity and hope to a fatherless Burundian family for about $1 a day. When you choose to sponsor a Burundian widow, you are connected with an individual widow—with a “sister”. She and her children will know your name and will write to you. Letters from you and photos of your family are encouraged.
Your tax-deductible sponsorship of $30 a month provides your widowed sister with funds to support her family. Given the dignity to make choices based on the individual needs of her family, your widow will be able to purchase:
- Food
- Seed to plant
- Clothing
- Routine medical care
- School supplies
- Household necessities
Through the contributions of Foundational Supporters of Sister Connection, 100% of your monthly sponsorship gift will go to your widow. No portion of your sponsorship will be used for overhead or operating costs.
As a sponsor, you will receive your sister’s personal profile and photo, as well as a complete sponsorship packet. You will periodically receive letters from your sister, and you will receive the Sister Connection Newsletter.
Your connection offers more than food and clothing to a widowed family.
- Spiritual growth - Sister Connection offers, but does not mandate, spiritual teaching through seminars and prayer gatherings. Christian widows within Sister Connection are active in their churches, and in reaching out to their fellow widows—especially nonbelievers.
- Healing broken hearts - The pain of being war widows and orphans in a Third World country is incomprehensible. No one defended them in this war, and no one seemed to care afterward. To have someone like you, someone they’ve never met, reach out and care for them is more meaningful than words can describe.
- Self-esteem - In Burundian culture, widows are the lowest of the societal low. They are outcasts and of no worth within the community. Many are thrown out of the family compound; others are abused by the family of the husband who was killed. Sister Connection enables widows to care for themselves and their children, thereby rebuilding their self-esteem and their status as “persons” within the community.
- HIV/AIDS prevention - desperate poverty pushes many widows into prostituting themselves or their daughters.
- Unity - tribal war in Burundi fostered hatred among the people. Sister Connection cares for all tribes with no exception, bringing unity and love among the sisters from Hutu, Tutsi and pygmy tribes, encouraging our widows to reach out to each other.
