Sponsor a child and change their life for good
Child sponsorship is a unique relationship, that brings real hope and a life-affirming experience. Sponsorship gives children and their communities life-changing basics like nutritious food, clean water, healthcare and education. And it lasts. Sponsor a child and save a childhood today.
Maybe you'd like to sponsor one of the children below instead? Alternatively, you can try a different search or call our Supporter Care team on 01908 84 10 10 who can help you with your original search.
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Hello, I’m Gediyon
Boy | My age: 7 | My home: Lemo, Ethiopia
My birthday is on the 10th May and I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters. In Lemo life is hard for children like me. But sponsor me today and you can help change my life.
Gediyon's life in Ethiopia
Gediyon’s daily needs:
In Lemo, children like Gediyon are at risk of all kinds of challenges. Parents often don’t understand why common practices such as child marriage or child labour are harmful to children.
- Children have to walk long distances for water due to a lack of proper water points. Poor hygiene practices and lack of proper sanitation facilities in the area.
- Children struggle to do well at school, and many drop out, because classrooms and facilities are poor.
- Many parents lack knowledge of nutrition, and struggle to provide a balanced diet. Children suffer from malnutrition, leading to stunted growth and poor development.
Your sponsorship can change Gediyon's world, and his community, for good.
How Sponsorship Helps
How sponsorship works
When you sponsor a child for £26 a month it brings much needed change to one child… and many more. The benefits you help provide, extend to your child's family, their community and other children in need. This is because we partner, plan and work alongside local community members to help build healthy, sustainable communities for vulnerable children in the world’s hardest places.
What will your donation actually change?
Because of our community-focused solutions, for every child you help, four more children benefit, too. Depending on the priority needs in your child’s community, as a sponsor you will be improving lives by providing:
Clean water
Each year children are dying from diseases caught by drinking dirty water. World Vision is reaching one new person with clean water every 10 seconds and brings clean water to three more schools every day.
Healthcare
We save lives by training volunteer health care assistants, bringing vaccination programmes, and working with families to help protect their children from infection and disease ensuring the most vulnerable have access to healthcare services.
Food
We deliver nutrition programmes and farmers' schools, teaching new techniques to grow stronger crops, protect the soil and grow kitchen gardens - helping families feed their children and saving millions of lives around the world.
Education
Education can transform a child’s life. We’re improving basic literacy and numeracy and working alongside communities to help them better understand their children's rights, and raise their voices to protect and provide for their children.
Family income
We provide training in new skills, and support mothers to start their own businesses helping provide a stable income so children and families can have better nutrition, healthcare and greater access to education.
Create lasting change
When you sponsor a child, you transform their life by helping to create lasting changes for their entire community
We work with whole communities to understand what they need.
We then work together to plan and deliver the changes that will make life better for them and their children - now and always.
Why choose World Vision?
We are the world’s largest international children’s charity, working to bring real hope to millions of children in the world’s hardest places.
60
Years old
We have 60 years of experience changing the lives of children around the world
3m
Children
In 2017, UK donors transformed the lives of more than 4 million children
4,000
New sponsors
Over 4,000 new sponsors joined us in the last year
43
Projects
We have 43 community projects across 19 countries
What makes child sponsorship special?
What do I get as a sponsor?
This week
Sign up to My Sponsorship - your online account where you'll find updates, news and videos from your sponsored child and their community. You can even email your child, send them photos or find out what the weather is like where they live!
Next week
Within the first week of signing up, we’ll email you a video of your sponsored child’s community giving you an insight into their daily life.
Within two weeks
You’ll receive a welcome pack with more information, a photo of your sponsored child, and a postcard - so you can easily write to them.
In 12 weeks time
You'll have received your very first letter from your sponsored child. You can write to them anytime by post or online via My Sponsorship. We'll translate and hand-deliver every message and you'll always get a reply.
On your child’s birthday and at Christmas
We’ll send you a card that you can add a message to for you sponsored child. Don’t be surprised if these arrive a couple of months before the big day - it’s just to make sure they get there in time.
Once a year
We’ll send you a progress update every year, including:
- A new photo so you can see how they’ve grown
- An update on how their life is changing
- Details on how your donations have been used in the community that year
- A note or drawing from your sponsored child.
You can visit your child
Visiting your sponsored child is a great way to see for yourself the difference that sponsorship makes. You can experience first-hand the transformation that your generosity can bring to a community living in poverty.
So what next?
Frequently Asked Questions
World Vision only work within countries where we have our own offices; this way, we ensure that we can fully account for all the money that we receive. We have audited accounts that are publically available at any time. As a charity, we are regulated by the Charities Commission – a legal body, which oversees all UK charities and their activities. We are a not-for-profit organisation, and we know that the continued support we receive is dependent on our efficient use of supporters’ money. Our Annual Report is available to anyone who requests it.
The donation you give does not go directly to your sponsored child or family. That's because experience has taught us it’s more effective to use the money on projects that will benefit your sponsored child’s community as a whole, at the same time improving the wellbeing of the child you sponsor.
We have 60 years experience of working with parents and communities to improve the lives of children. We’ve learnt a lot in that time, and we are very good at it.
We help to change a child’s life by working with the community where they live. Children are often the first to feel the impact of poverty. Being community based means that World Vision’s development experts work with the whole community to address their priorities for improving the lives of their children.
The challenges that communities face keep their children from reaching their full potential. For example, a community that does not have access to clean water will inevitably have children that are unhealthy. Communities without adequate ways for families to generate income, have more children that cannot afford to go to school or eat. Communities that do not have adequate access to government services like healthcare and birth registration are limited in what they can provide for their children.
However, building a better community for children takes time. It involves things like building trusting relationships so we can work together, teaching people new skills and providing them with the right tools. It also includes transforming mind sets and looking at the importance of doing things differently so their children can have better futures. Our work within a community usually stretches over 10-15 years. The impact of child-focused community development is ongoing and along the way children’s health improves, communities become more resilient and families gain hope for their children.
£26 per month is what it costs for us to do this, but it works. We know it works, because we have 60 years experience of making it work.
You'll be given the opportunity to find out how your child is doing alongside regular news from their community that will help you build a relationship that could change both your lives. "I am so happy to have a friend in another country that I can write to and share pictures with," says Nareh from Armenia. “I am studying the Armenian alphabet. When I learn them all, I will teach them to my distant friend. I am so happy to have a friend in another country.”
