For a child growing up in poverty, getting just the basic necessities like food and clean water, can be a challenge every day. But when someone steps in to sponsor a child, everything changes.
Having a sponsor can help change a child’s life by giving them a way out of poverty and the chance to have a brighter future. Through the incredible generosity of sponsors, we’ve seen children who grew up in poverty rising up to become the next generation of nurses, doctors, teachers, pastors, business owners, and Christ-centered leaders in five countries.
Over the past 28 years, we’ve seen story after story from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Uganda showing that child sponsorship works. That’s because sponsorship is about caring for the whole child. Your generosity helps provide for a child’s physical, educational, social, and spiritual needs. Here’s how that’s broken down with your sponsorship:
Physical Care:
Children living in poverty are vulnerable to malnutrition and dangerous diseases. No child should go to bed hungry or suffer from a disease that could have been prevented.
Sponsorship helps to ensure that a child has access to nutritious food, medical and dental care, clean water, vitamins, health education, and more!
Educational Care:
Education helps young men and women discover their passions, pursue a career they love, and build a sustainable future.
Sponsorship can take a child from preschool all the way through university. There are also opportunities for skills training for young adults working toward a vocational career, after school programs, and a program for children with special needs.
Social Care:
Many of the children we serve have faced hardship. Sometimes even extreme cases of trauma, abuse, neglect, or illness. But a child in the sponsorship program has access to the support, care, and counseling they need for their emotional well-being.
Children also have the opportunity to connect to their culture and community through traditional music, dance, storytelling, and more.
Spiritual Care:
Every child should be able to learn about God and know He loves them. Through sponsorship, children can take part in Bible studies, worship, devotionals, summer camps, and other activities that can help them grow in their faith!
How Sponsorship Helped Change Susan’s Life
As a child, Susan lived with her mother and sister on the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone. “I slept on the street and on the doorsteps of offices. If I managed to eat for the day, it would be dry bread,” says Susan. She remembers wanting to go to school, but not being able to.
Without enough food to eat, a roof over their heads, or the ability to learn and grow in school, a child has no way out of poverty. They are stuck.
But in 2003, Susan and her sister finally found a home at Children of the Nations. Thanks to the generosity of her sponsors, she could eat three meals a day, go to school, and go to church and learn about God.
Susan says that receiving letters from her sponsors made her feel happy and proud, and she would pray for her sponsors every day.
“If God had not provided me with caring sponsors, I would still be on the streets of Freetown, roaming miserably with no hope for the future,” says Susan.
From a young age, Susan dreamed of becoming an accountant. Thanks to the love and support of her sponsors, in 2017 she graduated from university, an incredible milestone for a student who once had no way to attend school.
Today, Susan is using her dream, education, and talent to give back to the next generation. She works for our Senior Finance Officer in Sierra Leone and helps provide care to over a thousand children every day.
When you sponsor a child, you are making a difference in their life EVERY DAY. Sponsors are heroes, because every sponsor is helping to ensure that children like Susan receive the care they need so they grow up, pursue their goals, and transform their nations.
Questions on how you can create lasting change in a child’s life? Check out our Sponsorship FAQ page.