Child Sponsership...does anyone sponser a child...?

[misspollysdolly]

Have been thinking about sponsering a child through an agency like Plan for a while and just wondered if anyone else out there is doing this. Does your £12 per month actually benefit the child in any meaningful way...? If it's not merely a glorified scam, I'd like to do it, in recognition of all the good things my children have access to that we often take for granted. Opinions welcomed!

We sponsor 2 children through a charity called World Vision.

I believe that it is not a scam. I think it is a reputable charity (imo). We pay £18 per month per child.

We receive annual updates/photos from the charity, in addition to several handwritten letters from the children. (written by a staff member, dictated by a parent). I occasionally send small gifts such as coloured pencils, these are always acknowledged.

If it is a scam, then they go to great lengths to make it seem genuine.

I know that there are many political arguments for and against doing it, but in my personal opinion it is the right thing for us as a family to do.

we sponsor a child through Plan. Plan are a highly regarded charity and I have no doubts that the money benefits the child we sponsor. We also get photos and letters.
Plan also send detailed breakdowns of what the money is used for and how much goes to the child and/or their community.

In what sense do you mean a Scam? We do it too. What exactly are you worried about? Your monthly payment doesn't go to one child if that's what you mean. It is allocated for resources in that area. So it benefits teh child by benefitting his community. YOu can small gifts too.

nkf I think that some people believe that a lot of charity work/projects are a scam which is very sad as there are (imo) many reputable charities.

imho some people believe this as it means they then don't have to consider donating to any charities. (which is of course their absolute right)

We have been sponsoring a boy for five years. We use World Vision too. We have photos of him growing up and one with one of the prezzies we sent him
Its lovely. And selfishly it is brilliant for my children who get to read about him and look up where he lives and ask him questions.
(sadly all he has got back is rugby from DS1 and dancing from DD and some photos of them and our house which probably freaked him out as it still freaks me out... Anyway ....)

We sponsor a little boy in Ecuador through Action Aid and have done so for about 3 years. I am confident that it is better to do this than nothing at all; it is our tiny contribution and I wish we could afford to do a lot more.

Thanks for your responses - and for being so positive about your experiences. You have confirmed my gut feeling that this will be a good thing do . Much appreciated!

We sponsor a little girl in South America through Plan. The money goes to community projects, rather than the child but we get (and send) letters and photographs and can send her small gifts (they are very strict about what you can send).

Yes, through Plan International. Was v sad though, she hadn't got a dad and then her mum died
DH used to sponsor a little boy through Action Aid but he died so he opted to just carry on giving the money to benefit the community.
It rather brings it home how precarious life is in some places.

There's a good comparison site I found recently at:

www.sponsorachild.org.uk/

It's got lots of details about a number of charities.

Hope the info is useful!

Another one who does this via Plan, her name is Ruth and she lives in Zambia. Have been sponsoring her for about 8 years and it is lovely, and fascinating, to get the photos and updates.

The scam thing never occurred to me - Plan is very well established for this programme.

We sponsor two through Action Aid and one through SOS Children www.soschildren.org, one for each of our kids. They are very different charities, but both good. SOS Children give lone/orphaned children a new mum and family with the money but Action Aid do good stuff in the broader community instead. With Action Aid though when they move countries you lose contact and just assign another kid somewhere else and we have had a few updates saying "when we visited their village we could not find your sponsored child, they may have moved" and also one death. We haven't been with SOS so long but the relationship there seems to see a kid through to independence so your children can follow a single child as they grow up.

Ref whether it is sometimes a scam see today's BBC news news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8084477.stm
although that was only World Vision I think.