Despite Global COVID-19 Challenges, One Life Presses On | Global Impact

COVID has been incredibly disruptive to our regular One Life programming schedule. With the global lockdown, we've been unable to travel to any of our 24 sites since March—something we usually do at least twice a year. These trips allow us to check in on and spend time with all our children, take fresh photos, and collect and deliver letters. This year, we’ve had to get creative...we're depending on the mail system which has been problematic in a couple of our countries due to poor infrastructure. At eight of our Southeast Asia sites, using the mail is not an option because it’s too dangerous for our partners to establish a connection with us in this way. As a result, many of our One Life sites have had to depend on the internet to send scanned copies of your letters, using poor service with weak WiFi signals. It has significantly increased the workload for our partners during a season that has already brought much stress and pressure to their ministries. In spite of the challenges, we are hopeful that all our sponsors will receive a letter from their child by year end.

There is however, some good news. South Africa recently opened up for all international travel. This is our first One Life country to do so. India and Thailand are still in lock down or require a 14-day quarantine for all visitors. We are hopeful that by March 2021, we will be able to head back out to all our sites and catch up with our kids and partners.

On the ground, our programs have continued in strength with adjustments to schedules and processes. We have provided supplemental food to at-risk families and accommodated all the COVID safety requirements in each country. In South Africa, the children are wrapping up a difficult school year and will soon be out for their summer holidays. The children in Thailand had the advantage of being able to return to school in June as their COVID-19 counts have remained low. In India, the government recently reopened schools after being closed for almost seven months. As a result, the government mandated all children at our largest One Life site be sent back to their villages to live with relatives or neighbors. We continue to monitor the situation and our One Life staff have spent the last several months visiting the children in their homes as they help integrate back into their communities.

Please continue to pray for One Life. This season has been hard and complicated, but we continue to be grateful to our sponsors for the continued support of our children and the One Life Program. Your faithfulness has been an encouragement to us, our partners, and our sponsored kids!