Many people may have thought about sponsoring a child – or even actually sponsored one. However, what is it like for the child who is being sponsored? It can be quite hard to imagine this, and is often easier to focus on the positive feelings we get from doing something good for someone else. Let’s take a look at what it might feel like to be a sponsored child.

Improving Life

Say, for instance, that you live in a deprived area of Zimbabwe. There’s no electricity, no running water and the only water that you have access to is unclean. Sometimes, it makes you sick and even though you are only six years old, you know people have died from drinking the water. Yet there is no other option. There is no decent healthcare service where you live, so if you are sick, there are very few options.

Most people in the region where you live are farmers, but they find it hard to grow enough food to even feed their families, let alone make a proper living. As a result, you are malnourished and small for your age, and at risk of catching different diseases due to a lack of good quality food.

From this, it’s easy to see what a difference even a small amount of outside help could make, such as someone sponsoring you – that child living in rural Zimbabwe. For instance, the sponsorship money could be used to provide healthcare to the local people, such as offering vaccinations and HIV education to the children and others to stop people getting ill. It could be used to provide a clean water supply so people are able to drink the water safely, without worrying that it might do them more harm than good.

Improving the Surrounding Environment

The sponsorship money could also provide things such as crops that are able to grow in difficult climates, or some farm animals to give that child milk to drink and meat to eat, as well as offering better potential for the child’s parents to make a living from their farm. As a result, the child’s health would be likely to improve, they would grow better and they would be able to see a real future for themselves.

Of course, one person sponsoring a child alone will not be enough, but it can still make a significant difference and the more people who sponsor children like this, the bigger the difference we can make. You’d be surprised how little it costs to change something permanently for the better, so why not give it a go?

Guest post on behalf of World Vision charity giving working to make a lasting difference to poverty around the world.