I know many of my friends sponsor a child through World Vision. It only cost $35 a month to provide food, shelter, education and a hope to a poor kid in a third world country. This week Chalice, a program similar to World Vision but run by Catholic priests, come to our church for promotion. The priest display many photos of poor children from all over the world. Each photo come with a brief description of the child and a donation package. You can select a child and become his sponsor on the spot. Pat always want to sponsor a child. She picked a child in Bangladesh because he say he like playing cricket and Bangladesh is next to India. I guess she pick this child to make fun of me.
I am never very kin on signing up to become a sponsor. It’s indisputable a charity good deed so I am not against it. However, I think sponsor a child is only treating the symptom of the real problem, but will never solve it. It definitely makes a huge difference to the child you sponsor or other children share the same facility. But on a broader scale, it is just like fighting fire with a cup of a water. It is pretty much useless. The real problem is there are too many poor people in third world countries. Those poor children should not come to the world to suffer in the first place. Poor children grew up into poor adult who give birth to more poor children. We have to stop this vicious circle if we really want to fix the problem. I wanted to donate money to get things done right once for all, not just treating the symptom. Actually I tried to search for charity programs that focus on family planning in third world country, but I found none. Making poor people having less babies is a more noble deed than the charity work of feeding a few hungry mouths.