Sponsor a Child in Thailand
For the price of a few coffees a month, a child in a Thai village hears the name of Jesus every week — taught in their own language, by a leader from their own people, in a church that will still be there long after the gift stops.
Sponsorship here funds a church, not an institution.
Thailand Kids does not run orphanages or boarding schools. Children stay with their families, in their villages. What a sponsor pays for is the thing those villages do not have — a trained leader, week after week, with something worth teaching.
What is taught
Teaching in their own language
Lessons in Thai, written for children who have never heard a Bible story before — not translated from an American Sunday school and hoped for the best.
A story lands differently when it arrives in the language a child dreams in. The curriculum is locally adapted, and so is the worship: children learn to sing, pray and hear Scripture as themselves, in Thai language and culture, rather than borrowing someone else's.
- Weekly children's church, every week of the year
- Locally adapted curriculum, worship and Bible teaching
- Lesson materials a child can keep and take home
Who teaches
A leader from their own people
Every children's church is led by someone local, trained at one of our centers. They speak the dialect, know the families, and are still there next year.
Each leader trains for eighteen months before they are handed a congregation of their own. From the very first Sunday the church is led by a trained Thai believer from that region — known to the parents, accountable to a local church, and present all year rather than for a week.
- Eighteen months of training before leading
- From the same region as the children they teach
- Small groups, so every child is known by name
Where it happens
Children stay with their families
The church comes to the village. No child is moved, housed or separated from their parents in order to be discipled.
Before a children's church launches, our Thai partners spend months building trust with the families and community leaders of that village. Nothing is done around parents or behind them. And what children learn does not stay with the children — their faith radiates outward, and parents and families follow.
- No orphanage, boarding home or residential programme
- Months of trust-building with families before launch
- Parents give written consent, and can withdraw it
What remains
Something that keeps going
A sponsored child is one child. A trained leader is a congregation. Sponsorship funds the second in order to reach the first.
A gift that ends should not end the church. Because the leader is local and trained, the congregation carries on — and healthy churches then plant new churches in the villages beyond them. That is the difference between a movement and a programme, and it is what your giving is building.
- A local leader remains when outside support changes
- Healthy churches plant new churches
- 175 churches planted across 21 Thai provinces
Three ways to sponsor
Every level is a monthly gift, cancellable at any time, processed by the Foursquare Foundation. Pick the one that fits — the smallest is not the lesser gift.
Seed Sponsor
Plant a seed in one child's life.
- Sponsors one child's monthly materials
- Quarterly impact letter
- Child's name in our prayer guide
- Annual report on your impact
Church Planter
Full sponsorship of one named child.
- Full sponsorship of one named child
- Photo and story of your child
- Annual personal update letter
- Name in the church planting record
- Certificate of Sponsorship
Leader Builder
Fund the leader who reaches the village.
- Fully funds one local leader's training
- Personal updates from your leader
- Priority trip invitation to visit Thailand
- Named dedication in a new church plant
Giving as a church rather than a household? A congregation can walk with one village family at $250 a month, or fund a whole church plant from $5,000. See Plant a Church.
From your first gift to your first letter
Sponsorship is a relationship with a child and a village, so it starts carefully rather than instantly. Here is the order things happen in.
You give
Your gift is processed by the Foursquare Foundation, our 501(c)(3) parent. You will have a tax-deductible receipt in your inbox before you hear anything from us.
A child is matched
Children are matched from villages where a leader is already teaching — never from a waiting list of photographs. Matching waits on parental consent, so it is deliberate rather than immediate.
Your welcome pack arrives
Who your child is, the village church they attend, the leader who teaches them, and how to pray for them by name.
Updates keep coming
Letters through the year, and an annual account of what your giving built. Written by the field team, not by a marketing department.
The rules we keep about your child's photograph
Sponsorship means sending a child's picture and story to someone they have never met, on the other side of the world. That is normal in this work, and it is the single greatest risk this ministry carries. So it is governed, in writing, the rules do not bend for a deadline — and every photograph is altered before it leaves Thailand. Everything on this page — the consent, the altered image, the first name and no further — is one standard, and it has a name: the Thailand Kids Shield.
"Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
Matthew 18:5–6
A duty we were given, not a policy we adopted
We do not protect children because a regulator asked us to. We were told to, by Jesus himself, in some of the most severe words he ever spoke. To welcome a child in his name is to welcome him. To put one in harm's way is the gravest failure a ministry can commit.
We take him at his word. Everything that follows — the consent forms, the altered photographs, the letters that wait — is simply what that instruction looks like on an ordinary weekday.
The Thailand Kids Shield
Protected, and still a real face
Every image that goes to a sponsor is altered first, so the child in it cannot be identified, searched for, or traced to a place. What survives the process is the part that matters — the face, the expression, the moment that was worth sending.
We could protect a child by sending nothing, or by reducing them to a blur. Neither is worth doing. A sponsor who never sees a face eventually stops giving, and a child turned into a grey shape has not been honoured. The technology now exists to do both things at once, so we use it.
Three children, not one
You still sponsor one named child, and you will know exactly who they are. But the photographs that come with your letters will usually show three children together — the small group your child learns in — rather than your child alone.
That is deliberate. Families in these villages move: parents follow work, a household relocates, circumstances change. A sponsor attached to exactly one face can lose the whole relationship overnight. Seeing the group means what you are holding onto is the children's church, which stays. If your child does move on, you hear it from us personally, by name, before any routine letter would tell you.
The photographs on this page are illustrations, generated for it — not children in our programme. The card above shows how a sponsor update can arrive, with the mark in the corner and the notice beneath.
The Shield mark, and what its absence does not mean
An image that has been through the Shield may carry its mark — the Thailand Kids shield. On this page it is shown at full strength, because this is where we explain it. Elsewhere it may sit faintly in a corner, so it never comes between you and the photograph. And sometimes it will not appear at all.
The mark is a label. The protection is the work. We may use the mark, or leave it off, without notice — in a letter, on this website, in print. What never varies is the Shield itself: the consent, the altered image, the first name only, the province and no further. Never read a missing mark as missing care.
You can sponsor a child and be at peace about it. We are doing everything we know how to do to keep these children safe, and when we learn a better way, we will do that too.
What a family chooses to share
The rules above are the floor, not the ceiling. A family or a whole congregation may decide to release more than the minimum — and that decision is theirs to make, in writing, in Thai, and to take back whenever they want.
A child sponsored on their own
Every rule applies without exception. The image is altered, the name is a first name or a chosen one, the location stops at the province, and the consent is renewed every year.
No one else can waive this. Not a family, not a church, not a leader.
A family sponsored together
A household may choose to be seen as itself: an unaltered photograph, the family name, their village, and their story told in their own words rather than summarised for them.
It covers the family only. A child sponsored individually keeps the strictest rules even inside a family that has waived them.
A congregation partnering with a church
A church can speak for itself, and many want to. A partnering congregation may be named and shown in full — the village, the church, its leaders, the building your giving helped raise.
Children are never included by default. A church waiver covers the church. Every child in its photographs is still governed by the rules above.
What never changes, at any level
Seven conditions are checked before anything about a child leaves Thailand. Every one of them must pass, whatever has been waived and whoever is waiting on the letter.
- A signed parental consent is on file — in Thai — before any child's image or name is shared, and it can be withdrawn at any time.
- Consent is renewed every year. An expired consent stops the update, at every level.
- A child's full name is never sent. First name or a chosen name only.
- A child's location is given at province level. The specific village is not named to a sponsor.
- Every image of a child is altered before it is sent. No exceptions, and no level of consent changes it.
- No photograph shows a child undressed, in distress, or in any way that could identify where they live.
- Sponsors agree in writing that images are for their own encouragement and prayer, never for public posting.
If any condition fails, the update waits. A late letter is recoverable; a safeguarding breach is not. Read the full policy on child protection.
What happens when you press Give
You leave this site
Donating opens give.foursquare.org in a new tab. That is the Foursquare Foundation's own secure giving platform. Thailand Kids never handles your card details and never sees them.
Your gift is tax-deductible
Thailand Kids is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your receipt comes from Foursquare and is valid for a US tax deduction.
You can stop at any time
Monthly sponsorship is cancellable whenever you need to, from the same platform. If circumstances change, tell us — a child is never left mid-year without the ministry knowing.
One child. One village. One name they will not forget.
There are villages in northern Thailand with a trained leader ready and no funding to gather the children. Sponsorship is what closes that gap.