Posted by Ray White on January 31, 2009 Comments (2)

Chester Dave P. is 9 years old and lives in the Philippines. He lives with his parents and one brother 4 years old and one sister, 8 years of age.

Chester’s birthday is August 12, 1999, he attends school where his favorite subject is science.

His favorite past times are playing basketball and playing with friends. His interest and hobbies also include drawing, dancing and singing.

Chester is our sponsored child, through Children International. Since the members of Soaring4Traffic have made this possible, you can take pride in this long term project.

Our monthly contribution to sponsor Chester does provide some basic needs, however we do intend and will make additional contributions to further improve his life and family needs.

Should anyone wish to personally sponsor a child and/or contribute to these worthy projects, you can find detailed information on our Children International page.

We do want to stay in touch with Chester and should you wish to add comments feel free to contact me. However as quoted from the Children International website…

Be encouraging. Your encouragement is one of the most important things you can give your child. Consider your child’s culture. You may wish to read your letter through their eyes, making sure your child’s cultural differences are respected…

Stay in touch…but not too much. Children write to their sponsors twice each year. We recommend that sponsors write twice a year too. This keeps the exchange between sponsor and child going without overwhelming your child or the translators…

We will post correspondence from Chester and any pertinent information related to his progress on this page in the future. We will however respect and only post information we feel can be made public, respective of his privacy.

We are very proud to do this on your behalf and wish Chester much success and happiness in the future.

Update Feb 28th, 2009:

Late with this update but near the end of January, Paula of Hit Safari and I did a joint promotion. This promo was designed to give our members a chance to win some extra cash and participate in a competition where we would each give a cash gift to each of our sponsored children.

I am proud to announce that based on the competition we were each committed to giving a cash gift of $75 to each. Chester’s gift of $75 was sent on January 30th, 2009. Many thanks to all for the fun competition and for caring about our kids…

Update March 5th, 2009:

See scanned image of letter received below. Wanted to share this with you.

Update June 2, 2009

Would like to say that though we haven’t been posting to this page a lot does not mean that we are not in contact through snail mail with Chester. We have received several letters and cards from him and it always puts a smile on our face each time.

Sometimes I think that Chester is a larger influence on my life than I am his. He is one awesome little boy. Every letter contains a drawing, a thank you, and God Bless salutation, written in his own words. One quote I would like to share that makes me understand him more.

Chester: “I love my family, I will study hard to help my family and other people that need my help.”
End of quote.

Update July 11, 2010

Wow, it has been a long time since I updated this page. Chester is doing well, I continue to receive letters, photo’s and updates about his life. Chester is certainly one positive and happy little boy, no matter what his situation is. Chester is having a birthday soon which reminded me about this page. He will be 11 on August 12,th, 2010.  We have sent a birthday gift so that he will have a Happy Birthday for sure, but I’m getting this wild idea how members of Soaring4Traffic might add to those funds.  More on that later.

Update: July 20th, 2010

Member Contributions for Chesters Birthday
Anonymous $12.15
Diana Grinyer $2.00
Kaye Towne $8.33
Anonymous $6.50
Barry Post $4.00
Sean Supplee $12.07
Spencer Newman $2.94

Total $47.99

I sincerely want to thank the members who contributed. Below is the receipt, I just rounded the payment up to an even $50 and sent a note for special Birthday wishes from the members of Soaring4Traffic.

Thank you for your contribution to Children International. Your donation will be posted to your account in 2-3 business days. Your contribution details are shown below.

Name: Ray White
Account #: ****441

Donation Type: Special Gift
Child ID: 1009431
Donation Amount: $50.00

Total Donation: $50.00