Child Sponsorship

~by Chad Verity~

We’ve all seen the commercials. Little children wearing what would be generously described as rags, flies buzzing around their eyes and mouth with a facial expression noting that life for them hasn’t really begun. They make me uncomfortable. I turn the channel quickly. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s because my heart could never reconcile the images on the screen as reality. Those images were so foreign to my experiences that I met them with indifference.

Not helping my apathy is that the pictures are everywhere. You can’t watch the sports channel without having to sit through a lengthy advertisement. Every Christian conference or event comes complete with some pitch to sponsor a child. Countless organizations toting the photographs of countless children all with a dollar amount attached. All the while I was still trying to figure out whether or not any of it was real. There is no way a child could live that much of her life in such dire poverty. That much lack is simply unbelievable.

All of that changed one day in September on a grassy hillside in Central Uganda. To be clear, going to Uganda had nothing to do with child sponsorship. I was on the plane simply because I wanted to experience CHAP, the Community HIV/AIDS Program. I wanted to see how HIV was affecting multiple generations of people on the other side of the planet.

I honestly had too many doubts about child sponsorship to consider participating in any program. Opportunities to sponsor children are plentiful. The organizations offering similar programs are unlimited. Perhaps I simply grew numb to the idea of sponsorship because of the great noise created by the commercials and the concert plugs and the Sunday morning spotlights and the mall kiosks.

That all ended one day, as I said, in September. While sitting and waiting to meet the sponsored child of a friend, I no longer saw the excuses. I just saw the smiling face of a little boy named Yonah, April Clowes’ sponsored child.

All week I had seen the faces of children living in extreme poverty. I witnessed children living without adequate nutrition. Living in what would be graciously described as huts. These children live without basic sanitation like running water or bathroom facilities. If a child’s family can afford to send them to school, even if for a short time, that child would then have at least one meal a day and have access to some essential health services. However a family that can provide their children with education on a continual and annual basis is rare. Most children that we encountered were on their way home from school because of their lack of funds.

From my experiences the ‘norm’ looks like distended bellies caused by malnutrition or worms. The norm looks like the idle wait for a day that is better than the one they are currently living. It looks like girls without the opportunity to go to school becoming easy targets for men with evil intentions. It looks like early pregnancy and the continuing cycle of poverty. It looks like HIV and a life expectancy under 40.

Sponsored children are the exception. Yonah and the 779 other sponsored boys and girls in his school live the exception. They live with clean water, clean clothes, with food to eat and a safe place to learn and get an education. Their families are supported financially as well. Money that would have gone to their child’s education can now go towards food, personal hygiene or to an unsponsored brother or sister’s education. Most importantly a sponsorship provides hope, to the child but to the community as well. Walking around the school campus, the distended bellies are gone. Positive HIV statuses are significantly lower.

After coming back from the sponsorship school in Kyindi I sat down to write on our blog. This is what I wrote that night:

Blog Entry from September 25th, 2011:

Some of us have had the privilege of meeting sponsored children in both the Buikwe and Kyindi Primary Schools. It truly changes the way I approach child sponsorship programs seeing things from the side of the children. Child sponsorship through the International Needs program can make the difference between life and death. There are two types of schools in Uganda. Much like in Canada there are those public and those private. It is the law of this country that all children must attend primary school, so public schools provide the educational requirements to any child. However most public schools we have come across in our travels still require a term fee for books and a daily meal. As well, a matching uniform is required. When a child’s parents cannot cover their full term fee they are sent home from school until the money can be paid. Though a typical term fee for the most rustic of public schools wouldn’t exceed $10 CAD, many children are denied their education. Especially for young Ugandan girls, education is the road out of a life of early pregnancy and inequality. In Uganda all roads lead to Kampala, to higher education and a future, and most from the Buikwe district will never make it that far."

This December you will each be given an opportunity to enter into a sponsor-relationship with a child living in the same rural villages I visited in Uganda. From what I’ve seen with my own eyes it is the difference between life and death for these children. I know the need is great, but let’s not choose to do nothing simply because we can’t do everything. Child sponsorship does change the world for one child, and through it your world will be changed as well. You’ll have an opportunity to write your sponsored child and they’ll write back. You’ll receive a progress report on your child’s development every year. And of course, visiting them is always an option. I know that it changed the lives of the people on our trip. It will change your life as well.