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Child sponsorship allows an individual, typically in a developed country, to sponsor, or fund a child in a developing country until the child becomes self sufficient. This could mean financially supporting the education, health or security of the sponsored child, or in some cases all of these. This could also mean contributing more widely to the child's community developing without directly helping an individual child.
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Child sponsorship process
After choosing a child to sponsor, the charitable organization that manages the sponsorship typically sends information about the child to the sponsor. These organizations direct money to, and manage communication between sponsored children and their sponsors, including translating letters, and in some cases ensuring that the communications are appropriate. Some organizations pay school fees and other educational needs for the sponsored children and hold a weekly club which includes a supplemental meal, educational and health topics, counseling, and sometimes inspirational teaching.
How sponsorship funds are used
Some major child sponsorship organizations use the funds given for community development and do not claim any direct benefit to the child. Others use the funds directly for the child and their immediate community or family, others again are somewhere in between, with the child benefiting from a wider community project such as a school or medical centre.
Critics have argued that child sponsorship could alienate the relatively privileged sponsored children from their peers and may perpetuate harmful stereotypes about third-world citizens being helpless. They also claim that child sponsorship causes cultural confusion and unrealistic aspirations on the part of the recipient, and that child sponsorship is expensive to administer.[1][2] This latter problem has led some charities to offer information about a "typical" child to very many sponsors rather than one specifically supported by the sponsor.
Organizations
Many organizations run child sponsorship programs all over the world in 3rd world countries, including 35 based in the UK alone. Some of the more notable ones are:
- Children International
- Compassion International
- International Childcare Trust
- World Vision
- Abaana
- SOS Children
- Child In Need Institute (CINI)
- Food for the Hungry
- Every Child Ministries
References
- ^ Simply...Why you should not sponsor a child, New Internationalist, April 1989.
- ^ Peter Stalker, Please do not sponsor this child, New Internationalist, May 1982
External links
- The Rough Guide to a Better World a UK government publication reviewing some types of sponsorship, including arguments for and against.
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