Look what arrived in the mail today!
I’ve wanted to sponsor a child for as long as I could remember, and now I’m finally doing it! I am so excited to start sowing into the life of a precious little boy named Yamil from Bolivia, both through finances and through prayer. I think it’s so hard to decide who/what to give to financially outside of the local church; there are countless worthy people and organizations. But for me sponsoring a child was a given.
I’d like to write a little about how I ended up choosing sponsorship through Compassion International, in case any of you are in the process of choosing an organization. Or perhaps this can be helpful if you go through this process in the future. When I initially started researching sponsorship organizations, I did not immediately default to the two popular behemoths o child sponsorship in Christendom, World Vision and Compassion International. But as I tried to find information from charity watch organizations, I soon found that 1) there seemed to be more information concerning these two, including more transparency; and 2) they are ranked highest by charity watch organizations. So I soon did narrow my choices down to WV & CI. However, from them on the decision was really hard.
Ironically, that which ultimately caused me to choose CI actually happens to be the reason why WV is more effective at eradicating poverty. You see, World Vision approaches this at a systemic level. They partner with local governments and focus on community development. Child sponsorship funds in each area are pooled together so as to work toward raising the entire community to a higher standard of living. WV seems to be working to eradicate systemic poverty community by community. This, to me, is incredibly effective. However, the downside is that often, a sponsor’s child rarely sees any of the money that the sponsor gives. And I read a few testimonies where WV sponsors found out after years and years of sponsoring a child that the child was not even aware that he had a sponsor, and had never personally received anything from the funds of the sponsor. Needless to say, communication between child and sponsor also seems much more rare and sporadic through WV.
CI, on the other hand, focuses on each individual child. All your sponsorship dollars (minus what’s spent on admin) goes directly toward the child you sponsor and sometimes their family, so you truly radically impact a life and build a relationship with your child. The other major difference is that CI partners with local churches (whereas WV partners with local governments, as mentioned above).
So initially, it was really hard for me to choose between these two, as each seems to be strong where the other is weak and vice versa. But I soon realized that for me, CI is the better and more fitting choice. Through CI, you’re truly sponsoring a child. However, if you sponsor a child through WV, you’re not really sponsoring a child; it’s basically the same as if you’re giving regularly to WV in general, or to any other organization focusing on community development and alleviating systemic poverty. This is why I feel that CI is a better choice for child sponsorship, especially if you’re giving through other means to social action and community development.
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