Pen Pals

Why Pen pal?

Why Become A Pen Pal?
Here are a few benefits you would have.
- Geography:  You will become better in your world geography.  You would likely know the location of your pen pals country on the map, the capital city etc and will do so without effort. You may be able to learn it otherwise but will likely forget sooner. Having a great friend there makes it unforgettable.
- Writing skills: It will improve your writing skills.
- Cultural exposure: It will expose you to other cultures and people groups around the world and increase your sociological knowledge.
- Appreciation for life: it will help you appreciate the blessings of being born where you are (e.g. in America) and having parents in a way that reading a book or watching television or hearing testimonies about it can't help.
- Build character: It will help you build your character. The kids you will be communicating with have so little yet achieve so much or go through so much. You will soon find out that if they can do it with so little, you can certainly do it with the blessings and advantages you have.  For example, many go to school without shoes, attend lectures without breakfast and still have to make good grades. This is not so that you should feel bad about yourself that you have parents, a home, and a better life than they.  That will be the wrong approach. Instead, be happy and thankful to God for blessing you like that and don’t take what you have for granted. It should make you enjoy life better.  The life you have gives you some experiences that your pen pal wouldn’t have. Share them with your pen pal. Your pen pal’s life gives him or her experiences that you don’t have. Share and edify each other.
- Life Long Friends: This could potentially lead you to having a lifelong friend in another country with whom you can share encouragement and the blessings and hardships of life. Friends who are less likely to judge you.
- Future Opportunities: to visit other countries
- A great hobby: Writing letters to a friend far away that you have come to love and cherish is a wonderful hobby

What to Expect

Pen Paling is great and can transform a person's life. However, to enjoy it to the full, you may need to change your expectations a little bit.
Our goal for this program is to serve as a tool that God uses to bless you as you communicate with an orphan. It is also for God to use the program to bless the orphan or underprivileged child as he or she communicates with you. It is not about us blessing you, or you blessing the orphan or the orphan blessing you, but it is about God blessing all of us as we work together.
One thing that you will need to know is that unlike kids in the developed world, kids in developing communities don't have access to computer or the internet. We are working hard to change this for many of the orphans we serve. But this is a slow process. For most of the kids, a children's worker has to get responses from them and actually send replies to you. Reasons for this are 1) Your friend may live $5 or more away from the closest city where internet services are available. The resources available to the kids don't allow them to go to the city for this reason. 2) Many of the kids are not computer literate. We are working on a program that will teach kids how to use the computer and as many resources are put into this program, many kids will become computer literate. Untill these problems are solved, you will get replies written by your friend (if your friend can write) or communicated by your friend but someone else will type and send the emails or mail the letter to you via the post office. However, when you write, write to your friend, not to the children's worker who will have to print your response to your friend and your friend will in turn write back to you. 

Why Support?

Our Pen Pal program is FREE. However we strongly encourage children to raise ANY amount of money to help support the friends they are writing.
Our ministry has many programs that are geared towards helping orphans. Our penpal program is a ministry that we have established mainly to help increase the horizon and deepen the understanding of school children in the U.S and Europe. All our programs have a focus. For example, the sponsorship program focuses on the children more. However, the sponsors also benefit greatly from sponsoring the children. They have the opportunity to give and the joy that comes with it. Our penpal program's focus is children in schools in the U.S and Europe. We want them to be able to communicate with people who have so little and yet are satisfied and be able to learn and share their lives. The orphans benefit as well because they get to enrich the lives of others by sharing their powerful testimonies of redemtion and survival and by just being a friend.

How it Works

How it Works

1. The first thing you need to do is go to http://www.connectingpenpals.com/ and create a FREE account. Add your picture and complete your profile entry. 
   Note: Your profile page must be completed fully before your friend request can be accepted. That is, when you sign up, make sure your profile has the following. You won't be allowed to penpal unless your profile has all of the following (in bold)
   - Put your current picture or a recent picture
   - Put some pictures in your album (At least one... Put as many as you want).
   - Put your correct names (No nicknames allowed. The kid's names you see are their real names)
   - "About me": Please complete this with information about you.
   - "Brief Description" : Complete it with a summary of something you are passionate about.
   - "Location": Put your city, state, country.
   - "Interests": Add your interests
   - "Contact email": Not required, feel free to include your email.
   - Complete your profile in an informative and professional manner.
   - Permission from parents or guardians if you are less than 18 years old.
   - Invite your friends to http://www.connectingpenpals.com/ so that you can stay in touch with them. $1 is donated to the orphans for every hundred people that join Connecting PenPal. This point is encouraged, not required.
   
2. Next, Search Connecting Pen Pals site for the group called "Shaping Destiny Children's Home" and from that group, select you friends. DON'T JOIN THE GROUP, just search it and select your friends. The reason we don't want others to join it is because it makes it harder to go through and search for an orphan to be friends with, that's all.
   You can only have two Pen Pals in one country. There is no limit to the number of pen pals one family can have - Just one person can have a maximum of two penpals in one country. One person can have two penpals in every country in the world and end up having many pen pals if that is what that person wants. However, Connecting PenPals is a growing community and may not have pen pals in all countries. Currently, Shaping Destiny kids live in Cameroon.
3. Subscribe online to sponsor your orphan at $35/month. Sponsor here. You can also mail a check to our address or
   you can call our toll free number to sponsor over the phone.
   
4. Go into http://www.connectingpenpals.com/ and add as your friends the child you are sponsoring
   .
5. Then begin communication. It's that simple.

The above three steps are required. The following steps are only recommended, not requred.

1. Check our Pen Pal FAQ
2. Tell your friends about this great Pen Pal program that at the same time helps sponsor the children!

Select a Pen Pal

Please go to  http://www.connectingpenpals.com/ and select the child you have signed up to sponsor. 

You are encouraged to invite your other friends and family to join connecting pen pal and be able to see your pen pal. Add many pictures of you and your family to your albums for your penpal to see. Many pictures will be added of your pen pal but this will be a gradual thing since your pen pal is underprivileged and because of resources it will take a litle longer to add pictures of them.

Application

First you will need to sponsor your pen pal to help meet their physical needs.
1) Your sponsorship will serve in place of an application since when you sponsor you will provide your address and contact
information in the process. You can sponsor online, by mailing a check or money order or on the phone.
2) Permission from parent or guardian if you are less than 18 years old.

If you are under 18 years of age, please inform your parent (s) or guardian(s). Have one of them send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . saying that they permit you to communicate.

** The Pen Pal program is an outreach of Shaping Destiny, a non profit organization in the U.S that serves orphans and widows around the world. We know that there are many wonderful benefits that can be gained from a pen pal relationship. But we also realize that in order to make the relationship save for both parties we have to do some work to make sure that the two individuals pen paling are safe.

Pen Pal FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about the Pen Pal Program.

How old are the pen pals? Ans: Average between 5-17 years old
Which pen pals are literate? The older kids, usually greater than 12 years old. Younger ones need translation which is readily available. So don't hesitate to write them.
How long does it take to get a reply from your pen pal? Ans: It depends on which method you use. Please check the Communicate tab for answer to this question.
Am I required to pay any money to become a pen pal? No. However, you are encouraged to consider doing something to SHARE your blessings with your friend that you are writing to who has very little. That is not a requirement at all. We teach the children to share the little they have with their friends. Your giving to support them teaches them the value of sharing. Also, it helps you practice that "sharing" that you learned from your own parents. The idea behind our encouragement to raise any amount of money to donate to them is the idea of sharing.
Are the letters sent to my pen pal confidential? Ans: Communication is chaperoned. Kids that need translation obviously have their letters read and translated to them.  
Can I date my pen pal? Ans: No, you relationship will be terminated if you become romantically involved with your pen pal.
Can I send gifts to my pen pal? Ans: Small gifts like stickers, postcards etc are allowed. Boxes and other parcels must be approved by Shaping Destiny. Please do not put money, checks, money orders, or any other valuable in your letter to your pen pal without first having it approved by Shaping Destiny. This rule helps protect the children. Your pen pal should not ask you to send money or other material things to them. If this happens, please kindly notify us. They should however share their lives with you and if you choose to help your pen pal, you will contact us to help you do so appropriately.
What is the age limit for people to have pen pals? Ans: There is no age limit. If you are less than 18 years old, parental consent is required. It is enough to have your mom or dad or guardian email us telling us in the email that she or she permits you to have a pen pal. 

Communicate

There are two methods you can communicate with your pen pal.

1) By postal mail.
 

There are two ways to get a letter to your child.
** We prefer all the letters to be hand-written.

After you write the letter, put it in an envelope, you can

1) Go to your post office and mail it to Cameroon directly.
Write to the following address. Remember to address the letter to your child.
The address will be:

[Your child's name]
Shaping Destiny Cameroon
P.O. Box 45
Batibo, Momo Division.
North West Province.
Cameroon, Africa.

Note that it may take as long as one month for a letter sent in the mail to get to your pen pal and the same amount of time to leave from your
pen pal to you. So expect to wait about three months to get a reply back in the mail.

Please if you send a letter to the kids by postal mail, kindly email mychild[at]shapingdestiny.org and let us know that you have

sent a letter in the mail to your child. This is helpful so that if we don't get the letter in a month, we may let you know.

Rarely, letters do get lost in the mail... and we want to know when that happens.

2) By Email
You can scan your letter, attach it to an email and send it to mychild[at]shapingdestiny.org

 Please address the letter to your child. Also write all of your child or children's names in the Subject field of your email.

You can start writing your child right away!

 

Support the Program

WHY SHOULD YOU SUPPORT THE PEN PAL PROGRAM?

We do not require penpals to pay any fees besides helping to sponsor the orphan. However, because communication with the child involves coordination by staff, printing emails for children to read and reply, postage for the child to write you back in the mail, money for scanning hand written letters for to be sent via email, etc,  we encourage all our Pen Pals both young and old to do anything they are comfortable with and even go out of their way to help raise funds to support the Pen Pal program and the Orphanage so that it will help us not only provide funds for running the Pen Pal program but also help the kids with their basic needs. Note that the $35/month that you give to sponsor the child goes to provide food, clothing, education, medical care etc for the kid and not for the pen pal program.

 This is NOT an obligation. You don’t have to give to the Pen Pal program to be a Pen Pal.  All that is required is that you sponsor your orphan. We just encourage you to support also support the pen pal program as well if you can. You can still communicate with the child even if you personally don't support or help to raise funds. The Pen Pal Program is run by funds from generous Pen Pals and donors like you. Without the generosity of those donors, the program will not exist. We strongly believe that if you get involved at the level of giving financially as you also write letters to your Pen Pal, you will be more fulfilled. We know that this may be difficult for some people. We provide simple ideas that make fundraising to support your Pen Pal not only doable but also fulfilling and transformational.  If you don't work, you can get a jar and collect change and store in it. You can save some of your pocket money to help your pen pals who have none. You can tell people about your birthday and tell them not to give you any gifts but to make monetary donations to the orphanage to help your pen pals out. Sheldon High School’s Keys Club did a 5k race and raced $380 to support their Pen Pals. Every amount counts! There are many ways to help.
All you need is the courage, kindness, generosity of heart. All those things you already have otherwise you wouldn’t be wanting to pen pal.

Enjoy communicating with your pen pal. Share your lives together, help each other, get to know each other, pray for each other. By doing that you release the compassionate and loving character within you, you release the hero within you.