Learn about children, like your sponsored child, who live in a different country and culture.
Your sponsored child lives across the world from you. Maybe he lives in China or Mongolia, maybe she speaks Tagalog or Hindi, maybe his favorite food is injera or even durian! But because of sponsorship, you share a connection that transcends your differences. Sponsorship is like a doorway into their world — an invitation to know them by name, see their life and invest in their future. As a child sponsor, you’ve opened the door…
Uganda
Linda slips off her shoes before running inside her concrete-and-stone house in rural Uganda’s Biika Iwamigo village. She lives here with her grandmother, sister Lillian and cousins Sophia, Ronald and Paris. It takes Linda an hour to walk to school, but with the help of sponsors, all five of the children have their uniforms, fees and books covered. After school, she helps sweep around their home and helps her grandmother collect firewood and food from their garden.
Thailand
In a fishing village in southern Thailand, Daris and Anis stand on the front porch of their thatched home, elevated several feet off the ground. Inside, mattresses are neatly propped against the wall and the room extends to another open-air porch — the kitchen where they cook nutritious meals from their garden.
China
While modern China evokes images of bustling cities, many of the children that sponsors support live in rural areas. Pei’s home in northern China is actually a cave — a single room dug into the side of a mountain. Families living in cave communities are among China’s most impoverished, and are often headed by a parent with medical or physical special needs — such as Pei’s father who, after hurting his leg in a motorcycle accident, could no longer work the hard manual labor jobs available to families in these communities.
Mongolia
Enkhdulguun holds his younger cousin in front of his family’s “ger” — a traditional home in Mongolia. Heated by a coal-burning stove in the middle of the room and insulated with sheep’s wool, their ger keeps them warm in temperatures that can plunge 40 degrees below zero.
India
Down a narrow alleyway adorned by clotheslines in Pune, India, a boy who attends a sponsor-supported afterschool program stands outside of his home. This small slum community shares a single water source and neighbors chip in to pay the electricity bill for a single street lamp — bringing light and safety to their homes after dark.
Ethiopia
Ten-year-old Sebsibe stands in the doorway of his “tukul,” a traditional, cone-shaped home made of eucalyptus branches and mud plaster with a high thatched roof. Sometimes, to prevent theft, families in Ethiopia will share their tukul with their cow, goat or chickens. Sebsibe lives with his older sister and her three children, who all attend school with support from sponsors. Their home is surrounded by the lush, vibrant foliage of their garden, including high-reaching corn that his family grows for food.
Cambodia
Still in their school uniforms, these sponsored boys are having an afterschool snack outside of their home in rural Cambodia. Like many Cambodian — or “Khmer” — homes, their house sits several feet above the ground in order to protect their family and their belongings from flooding, which is frequent in areas like these that are surrounded by rice paddies. The structure also provides room underneath the house for storing supplies, keeping livestock or hanging out in a hammock!
