Compassion Canada has been offering Exposure Trips for more than 25 years. We believe in the transformational power of the relationship between children and their sponsors. Meeting face-to-face is an incredible part of that. The main obstacles to providing such an encounter are sponsors not feeling comfortable planning their own international travel and the need to protect our international staff from being bombarded with individual requests to meet a child. The solution to these obstacles is what we now know as an Exposure Trip—a fully planned, carefully designed, cross-cultural experience that is led by a trained international trip leader.
We receive requests weekly from sponsors wanting to visit their child. Some of these trips are personal trips, where the sponsor is planning their trip to the country on their own, and we help organize the visit with their child. This takes a lot of planning for the sponsor, which is why we have created organized Exposure Trips as an alternative, for supporters who may want more structure and guidance.