The SO ‘adopted’ a 10-year-old boy in Niger a couple of years ago, by making monthly donations to World Vision. We’ve both heard that World Vision is one of the better charities. But she’s becoming disillusioned.
She received a photo of the child when she signed up. She received a drawing, ostensibly from the boy, without any explanation or context. (I never saw it.) She received a single letter, ostensibly from the boy. She received a newsletter that was more a plea for more money than what WV is doing in this particular village. That’s it. She’s written letters and has received no reply. She’s attempted to use WV’s email service to contact ‘her child’. No luck. She’s beginning to wonder if the kid even exists, and is considering stopping her donations.
Does anyone have any experience with World Vision? The impression I get – we get – is that some sort of continuing correspondence occurs when a child is ‘adopted’. Is this incorrect? The SO is a Christian. She is fine donating to causes and is planning to go on a medical missionary trip to South America. (She’s an RN.) But she wants to be sure that her donations are being used as they’re supposed to be used. And a letter from the kid would be nice.
The Wiki criticism is pretty bad, but whether it is an indicator of common practice or a fluke, I have no idea. I’d do more research than just ask here. My main giving it to my church, local agencies, and the Salvation Army.
With the understanding that they are EXTREMELY Christian and all of their programs are going to reflect that, World Vision actually does do some really cool work. They’ve got a great staff, and they are able to work in some surprising places where other organizations have trouble operating.
But, child sponsorship is not really their main business. While child sponsorship is appealing to donors, it is hands down one of the absolute worst ways to use aid money. Child sponsorship is inherently unfair (Your sister has a sponsor and you don’t? Sucks to be you, kid!) and more importantly it doesn’t really set up anything for lasting change. One kid gets healthcare and education, and if it works they will most likely leave the community, leaving them personally better off but achieving nothing sustainable that will perpetuate itself. Even more disturbing is that child sponsorship programs can create strange incentives, and staff ends up having to spend their time seeking out appropriate children rather than actually running programs.
It is much, much, much more effective to put that money into community-level improvements that have lasting repercussions. Buying one kid clean water is great, but fixing the well (improving everyone’s productivity by cutting down on illness) is better. Paying one kid’s school fees is great, but paying a new teacher to educate all the village kids can potentially completely change the village. Buying one kid food is great, but getting adults to adopt improved agricultural techniques can keep everyone food secure. Those are the kinds of programs that can lift an entire community permanently out of extreme poverty.
But then, experience shows that people are not likely to donate to the things that are most effective. They’d rather donate to things that give them the warm fuzzies. So most modern child sponsorship programs do a little slight of hand, and keep some aspect of child sponrship while using most of the funds in an actually effective way. It’s not as honest as it could be (though it’s all explained in the fine print), but the alternatives are not great- either they waste people’s money on an ineffective way of running programs, or they don’t get money and people condinue to be in need.
It’s one thing to say that your funds are going to help that child, when they’re actually going to help the child’s whole village: Helping the village is helping the child, albeit indirectly. But when they give specific details about specific children, like “she’s learning English in school, and is progressing well”, and those specific details aren’t true, how is that anything other than just plain lying?
I used to donate to World Vision but had a similar experience so I stopped donating. I originally got a picture of a little girl and some information about her. Then I got a letter telling me how great my sponsored boy is doing along with a drawing supposedly done by her/him which was obviously done by an older child or adult.
Letters went unanswered mostly except for the occasional one saying “Sorry, I’m too busy to write now”.
It was obviously all fabricated and made up so after a year I cancelled my sponsorship.
My son is 19 and living in Florida with his mother. I send him money, but I also do not receive letters. I’m nearly ready to trade him for an Ethiopian.
I’ve been sponsoring a child for the last 15 years. I get a form letter, and a photo of her once a year (most years). Of course, I have no idea if the things in the letter are true (her favorite subject, her favorite toy etc.).
I get updates like:
“Yovanela has received vaccines as part of XY district health program”
“Yovanela’s education is benefiting from the new supplies and extra classrooms at her school”.
In the literature, they make it pretty clear that they in fact fund community programs rather than individual children, and when I think about it, it makes much more sense. But it was still kind of surprising to realize exactly what was happening and for a while I had the two notions in my head at the same time: I sponsor an individual child AND I donate to community programs. Now I just think of it as I donate to community programs and my sponsored child is like a mascot, or point of reference, just something for me to identify with. But I like getting updates about her, and seeing her grow up in the photos from year to year.
I donate to animal charities often, and many of them have programs to “sponsor”/“adopt” a particular animal. I don’t really expect that Farm Sanctuary’s “adoption” program will necessarily use the money I gave them in the name of one particular turkey at their sanctuary only for that turkey. It’s just a fun way to feel more involved in the charity.
Quick hijack- anyone see the episode of the Richard Lewis-Jamie Lee Curtis sitcom Anything But Love where his “sponsored child” comes to the city to stay with him before she settles into the local university where she has a scholarship- and what he thought of as a cute foreign kid is now a smoking hot co-ed?
Remember the shock and scandal when it was discover that the Red Cross didn’t use all the money donated for X disaster on Disaster X?
Yes kids, in the grown-up world, the Red Cross is there handing out vouchers for motel rooms, sending in medical supplies to even events which DON"T make global headlines.
Using pics of starving kids to raise funds is tacky, but if they really do spend the money at the community level, I’d give them a pass for using less-than-honest fund raising techniques.
If they spend 90% of donations on salaries and promotion, cut them off, same as any other fraudulent “charity”.
Almost 50 years ago, my parents did the sponsoring-a-child thing with World Vision, with two little girls in Korea (one at a time). We would get a photo and history, and then handwritten note (in Korean) and a translation every so often (maybe once a month?). Not sure if the handwritten note was dictated or not. But they were genuine and were nice for my sister and me to correspond with a friend far away.
I have been sponsoring 2 children for about two years now. They are both from the Congo and according to some documentation i received, they live in same village.
Early on i was sent a drawing that claimed to have been made by one of ‘my children’
And since that one letter…nothing! No photographs, no cards or letters; nothing to let me know how they are doing ( school, food ,health,toys etc ??).
I have contacted WV but have yet to receive a reply. Does anyone know of an organisation that ‘polices’ world charities? I am thinking of ending my sponsorship but would hate to do so if WV turns out to be as good as they claim to be.
Johnny L.A., I would say the following to your SO, “Are your donations to charity about helping other people or about making you feel better? There are groups that evaluate charities that can tell you if your money is being used efficiently. As long as it is, why do you need to have someone tell you how important you are? If you need personal assurance that you’re helping someone, you need to donate your time to some group, not just your money. The charities that you just donate money to should use that money efficiently, and having to have someone send you a letter frequently is not the best way to do that.”
Yes, I know, just as you said in the OP. Again, she can’t reasonably hope that she is going to get the personal assurance that she is helping people when she contributes money to the charity. She should realize that that isn’t what charities like World Vision are for. They can’t have a child sending her letters just to make her feel good. She can accept that a charity is doing good things because a charity-rating group has evaluated it, or she can go somewhere to donate her time, but she can’t expect nice letters constantly from a child telling her how wonderful she is.
I wouldn’t donate to World Vision anyway (sounds too religious for my atheist tastes), but to my way of thinking the important point in this thread is whether charities do what they say they are going to do. If I donate for cause X then I expect all my money to go to cause X. I’ll grant that there may be occasional circumstances where unexpectedly high contributions make it impossible to use all the money for the purpose intended, but I would expect those to be extremely extraordinary circumstances. If what a charity says they are going to do is unreasonable, then they shouldn’t say they are going to do that.
Knowing the money is spent in the most efficient manner is (for me) the most important thing. If I were to choose between donating $500 to charity X, which will spend $67 on administrative costs and the other $433 on fighting poverty in some region, and donating $500 to charity Y, which will spend $67 dollars on administrative costs, $8 on seeing that I get regular letters from a child in that region who happens to be helped by the charity, and $425 on fighting poverty in that region, I would always choose charity Y. Among other things, you don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing: