If you are
looking for statistics to prove child sponsorship, like Living Stones
Foundation Builders works (www.wribrazil.com/foundationbuilder),
then look
here: (http://www.aholyexperience.com/2013/06/the-research-that-proves-you-can-change-the-world/)
“Overall,
sponsorship makes children 27 to 40 percent more likely to complete secondary
school, and 50 to 80 percent more likely to complete a university education. When the child grows up, he is 14–18 percent more
likely to obtain a salaried job, and 35 percent more likely to obtain a white-collar
job.”
“Poverty causes children to have very low self-esteem,
low aspirations. The big difference
that sponsorship makes is that it expands children’s views about their own
possibilities. We help them realize that they are each given special
gifts from God to benefit their communities, and we try to help them develop
aspirations for their future.” ~Wess
Stafford, Compassion Int.
“Patient
nurturing of self-worth, self-expectations, dreams, and aspirations may be a
critical part of helping children escape poverty. It is a holistic approach that secular antipoverty
initiatives have largely downplayed, but an approach that Christian development
groups have championed for decades.
The traditional approach
to development work has been to provide things for people. If people lack
education, we build them schools. If they are unhealthy, we build them
hospitals and provide doctors, or we drill a freshwater well. If their small
businesses are stagnant, we provide microcredit so they can borrow.
While each of these
interventions can be helpful in the right context, mere provision fails
to address the root of poverty: the behaviors, social systems, and mindset that
are created by poverty. The key
to ending poverty resides in the capacity of human beings—and their view of
their own capacity—to facilitate positive change. While some interventions are
necessary, especially in the area of health, they come at a cost of reinforcing
an inferiority complex among the poor. Good development organizations
understand this.
Along with providing some
basic resources that allow children to progress farther in school, the child-development
approach advocated by Compassion appears to get under the hood of human beings
to instill aspirations, character formation, and spiritual direction. In short, it trains people to be givers instead of
receivers.”
Living Stones is not
Compassion International, and we do not have the data to be able to do a
similar study, but we have the same principles, and an even stronger focus on
working through local churches. Please pray about being a part of our
sponsorship program called Foundation Builders: www.wribrazil.com/foundationbuilder
