Husband-wife duo Joe and Dottie Conforti pause for a photo in front of a volcano in remote Ecuador, where they traveled for a ChildFund Vision Tour in 2015. Vision Tours are immersive experiences that give sponsors the chance to meet the children and families they support firsthand and learn about the challenges they face.
Joe and Dottie Conforti have been sponsors for so long, they can’t tell you exactly how or where they first learned about ChildFund.
“I think it was probably something on television,” Dottie laughs.
Forty-five years later, they have sponsored more than a dozen children, empowered an entire community to become more self-sufficient, and taken two life-changing trips to parts of the world they never thought they’d see – first Ecuador, then Mexico – to meet the real kids and families whose lives were being transformed with their support.
“It’s one thing to read about it,” Joe says. “But to be there, to meet the people you’re helping in their hometowns … we’ve had these incredibly moving, emotional experiences that enhance our respect for the work ChildFund is doing and our own commitment to supporting it as much as we can.”
Beginning at the beginning
The Confortis have always viewed children and childhood itself as a worthy investment. Dottie worked for years as a specialist in early childhood development – developing early intervention programs in public schools, training teachers who would go into homes to talk to parents about early childhood, even working with kids who had been abandoned on the streets of New York.
“Childhood is an absolute foundation,” Dottie says. “[Development] begins at home. It begins at birth.”
The couple started out sponsoring just one child. But as their resources grew, so did their generosity. They decided they could take on two sponsored children, then three. Joe and Dottie were sponsoring four children and writing to them all regularly when, in 2015, they learned about the opportunity to go to Ecuador on a ChildFund Vision Tour.
“We said, ‘Let’s go!’” Dottie says. “And it was a really eye-opening experience in so many ways.”
“One of the communities we visited was a remote indigenous village in Pigua. It was in a little crevice in the mountains,” Joe says. “As we were leaving, I’ll never forget what one of the women said: ‘Everybody has forgotten us. The government has forgotten us. But you haven’t forgotten us.’ That’s when we asked to sponsor our fifth child.”
The couple has sponsored five children at a time ever since. But when they got home, they knew they wanted to do even more to help.
Closing the gaps
In 2016, the Confortis worked with ChildFund’s philanthropy team, along with another of the Vision Tour travelers, to “adopt” the community they had visited in Pigua. This major gift supported the village for three years with various initiatives to bolster children’s health and well-being – clean water and nutrition programs, livelihood opportunities, hiring a nurse to get into the community and provide health care on a regular basis.
“There is a gross imbalance between the resources that the developed world has over the so-called non-developed world,” Joe says. “It’s just one indicator of the profound inequality in the world. It was very encouraging to see that our support, in some little way, is helping to close those gaps.”
Five years later, in February 2020 – just before the COVID-19 crisis took the world by storm – the Confortis got an opportunity to go on another Vision Tour. This time, their journey took them to Oaxaca, Mexico, where they got to meet their sponsored child, 13-year-old José. There was a small celebration, a lunch and an exchanging of gifts, and everyone on the tour got to share the heartwarming moment.
From left to right: Joe, José, José’s mother and Dottie meet for the first time in Oaxaca.
It was certainly a day to remember. But just as memorable was the opportunity to compare the two ChildFund programs.
“It was obvious there is a template that ChildFund follows, but at the same time, it’s very sensitive to individual cultures,” Dottie says. “One thing I noticed in both programs is that they continue from early intervention with mothers all the way through high school and beyond. The programs are spread throughout the world, but the needs and the approaches are universal, and the staff are so incredibly skillful and sensitive.”
It may not surprise you that, as the next step in their commitment to children, the Confortis are planning to leave a legacy gift as part of their estate plans to support ChildFund’s early childhood development programs. With their assistance, kids around the world will be getting a stronger start in life – the “absolute foundation” that is so near and dear to Dottie’s heart. Giving: ‘Not even a question’
In spite of the enormous impact they’ve made and will continue to make in children’s lives, Joe and Dottie’s lifetime of giving is marked by a quiet humility.
“We’re not big consumers – we’re savers. We have enough to keep us comfortable,” Joe says. “We’d like to share as much as we can.”
“One reason I feel we’ve been inspired to give is because we’ve been really blessed,” Dottie adds. “If we have an ability to give so that it will make other people’s lives better, it’s not even a question.”
