HelpingHearts

Child Image Display Guidelines

• Displaying photos of your sponsored child

Sponsoring a child is an exhilarating experience and we encourage you to share with your friends and loved ones. You're welcome to display photos of your sponsored child at your home or personal space at work/business to share your experience of helping a child in need, along with basic personal information (first name, age and country only).

The child details are presented to you for conveying appropriate information about the sponsorship relationship, and are not to be distributed.

• Online publishing and emailing photos of your sponsored child

Emailing and publishing photos and personal information of your sponsored child online creates risks to the privacy, dignity and personal safety of the child. We ask you not to place your sponsored child's photo and/or personal information (age, last name, geographical location, health, or other) on a website (internet or intranet) or email it to others.

• Downloading images

We take potential misuse of child photographs on the web very seriously. Children and their families must be assured that Helping Hearts Trust is protecting the integrity of the information about themselves that they've given us, including photographs. Privacy also demands that children, their families and communities be shielded from any potential inappropriate contact from sponsors or others.

That's why we don't allow downloading, copying, or replicating photos or other information relating to children and their communities from our web site or any social media pages without our prior written permission.

Helping Hearts Trust monitors the web for inappropriate use of these images and we're committed to pursuing legal action to stopping their misuse.

Contacting Your Sponsored Child

Children have the right to be completely secure from the fear or reality of any potential abuse (either physical or emotional) resulting from an inappropriate contact by a sponsor or any other person. As you proceed in your sponsorship journey, you will notice that we release only limited information about the sponsored children.

• E-mails, Visits and Calls

By agreeing to become a child sponsor, you also agree not to attempt to contact a sponsored child, his or her family or community members, in any manner other than that prescribed and permitted in advance in writing by Helping Hearts Trust. Telephone calls, emails or unplanned visits to the child's residence and community are not allowed without the written permission and oversight of Helping Hearts Trust.

• OPlanned Visits

You are welcome to visit the child you sponsor and meet the whole family. Please send a written request to our email id at info@helpingheartstrust.org at least 10 days in advance and we will be glad to organize a visit on any weekday avoiding weekends and National Holidays. A sponsor will be allowed to meet a child only in the presence of Helping Hearts Trust staff and a parent/guardian of the sponsored child. Please note that Helping Hearts Trust does not allow unplanned visits to your sponsored child's residence or community, under any circumstance. Helping Hearts Trust would be more than happy to organise a visit for our sponsors to meet their sponsored children because all such visits must be organised through us.

• Letters

You can certainly write to your sponsored child. In fact, we encourage our sponsors to write to their children so as to get to know them and their family better. Your sponsored child can also write to you. Many sponsors and sponsored children find this a rewarding experience. If the child is very young or does not know how to write, someone will probably help him/her to write or the project staff will write on their behalf. However, any communication to your child should be addressed to Donor Relations, Helping Hearts Trust, at the Chennai Office.