My friend and colleague Tammilee was recently telling me about her incredible trip to Uganda with World Vision. World Vision is a global Christian humanitarian organization that partners with children, families and their communities to help them reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

Tammilee writes: “What I learned is World Vision does not send the money directly to each sponsor child’s family. Instead, they focus on the community and making sure the community is sustainable, safe for kids, and has their needs met. They work on 10-25 year plans depending on the community they are working with to bring necessities like safe water, education for all children, and education for parents on nutrition, farming and child protection. The money you donate each month truly makes a huge impact in the lives of not only your sponsor child but their community.”

I doublechecked with CharityWatch, which was founded 25 years ago and is considered America’s most independent and assertive charity watchdog, to make sure that World Vision isn’t one of those “charities” that uses the majority of their donations to pay high salaries to their executive board. They had an A- grade, which is great, so my wife and I decided to sponsor a child.

The most difficult part, in our experinece, is choosing which child to sponsor. First, you need to decide which country the child is from (countries included ranges from dozen of African countries to Asia to South America to Eastern Europe). Then, you can choose gender, age, birth month, and even birthday. Or you can search by need: Longest-waiting, orphaned child, higher-risk area, hunger crisis area.

It’s no easy task, so I left it up to my wife to choose. After a difficult process, she chose a four-year-old girl in Uganda since that’s where Tammilee had just visited. You can pay either monthly or yearly, which comes out to either $39/month or $468/year.

I thought this would be great to share since one of the reasons we travel is to help others and this is a way to help, even if you can’t travel.

 

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