Sponsorship Shines the Light for Children
World Vision child sponsors are glowing candles, this year shining a light for 1,747,904 children.They provide the consistent, monthly gifts that are the backbone of our community development projects worldwide. Health clinics and schools; homes and community centers; training in better agricultural practices; lessons on nutrition, hygiene, and sanitation; and microenterprise loans to families mean greater prosperity for all. World Vision assists communities to build, implement, and manage these improvements -- which ultimately improve children’s health and well-being -- with the funds supplied through sponsorship.

Faithful Giving -- A Relationship of Love
People who pledge to sponsor a child develop lifelong relationships with the children and families they support. Besides raising four children of their own, Jim and Tana Saldin have been sponsoring one child at a time since 1953.Tana recalls that when their first orphan became self-sufficient and no longer needed a sponsor, her youngest daughter was quite sad. "World Vision sent us a replacement child," Tana explains, "and all was well again."

The Saldins first responded to an appeal made by World Vision founder Bob Pierce after hearing him speak in Tacoma,Washington. Signing up to help a Korean child for $5 a month seemed to Tana "the right thing to do." Tana says, "You expect to do it [send a donation every month], and you love to do it."

Kids In Need Provides School Supplies
While sponsorship helps children abroad,World Vision works to help struggling families in the United States. In these homes, buying necessities and keeping a roof overhead leaves few resources for investing in a child’s educational needs. And though inner-city school districts attempt to evenly divide small budgets, students in middle-to-affluent communities receive more funding per pupil than children in impoverished areas.
World Vision’s Kids In Need is one program helping these children. In collaboration with the School & Home Office Products Association’s (SHOPA) Foundation for Education Excellence, we have opened five resource centers -- Seattle/Tacoma, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. -- that contain free school supplies.

Most of these gift-in-kind items have been donated by a school or office supply company, and neither the school district nor the teachers pay for the products. Participating schools must demonstrate that 70 percent or more of its students qualify for the free- or reduced-lunch programs --an indicator of family poverty. Teachers from these schools come in and "shop" free of charge for the items they need for the children in their classes. Katherine, a single mom in Los Angeles says, "I think the program is neat, because it gives the kids the supplies they need to learn, and it helps them with self-esteem."