Sponsor an African Child!

People who sponsor a child in Africa understand one important point: that the most effective way to help has proven to be community sponsorship not big government to government aid grants or political rallies.

Most people seem to have learned that big aid grants to governments generate corruption, and that political intervention often produces unforeseen negative results. Over the last fifty years or so, the economic and political situation of most of the world has been steadily improving, but Africa has been getting worse.

SOS Children's results in Africa over the last forty years have been impressive. We must not forget in amongst all the political hype that there are real people like us suffering serious hardship. In Africa (as elsewhere) SOS Children has a core policy of "deep local rooting". This means in the 44 African countries where we operate we have a well established local association who partner with other local organisations to change children's lives. The main way of helping is to give children a childhood, either by carefully supporting families on the brink of collapse (for example where the breadwinner has died of AIDS) and or as a last resort giving children a new family in a children's village. But deep local rooting means that that local associations can highlight other specific community needs, and we run 89 schools in Africa), many hospitals (for example the only obstetrics hospital in Somalia, since maternal death at childbirth causes street orphans), micro-finance schemes and so on. SOS Children have been "tracking footprints" looking at "outcomes" of how African children do when they set out on their own. The results are impressive.

Childhood in Africa

Although 90% of the children SOS gives a chance of childhood to in Africa are living in the community in fragile and fragmented families, you cannot sponsor those children. There are all sorts of reasons for this which may occur to you. It is only possible to sponsor children who are actually living in an SOS Children's Village. The funds from their sponsorship primarily pays for the child's home, family, food, clothes and education but is managed as a pooled fund which is also used for children in the nearby community. It is possible to make additional contributions into a savings account just for that child. It is better to pool funding, it would be bureaucratic when the Village has a vegetable allotment to work out who ate what. The children themselves care about those around them and we often see comments in "letters to Santa" and so on wanting to help those near.

Choosing where to sponsor a child in Africa

We offer child sponsorship in many African countries. For more information on the locations concerned please see our African sponsorship guide. This is a list of current locations where child sponsorship is available.  Click on a village name to find out about our work there: