Well, it’s about time I sponsored a child; I’m not going to miss the money, 20-30 quid can go in an instant living in London, so why not put the money to good use? I received an email from World Vision recently and I have to say, Sierra Leone does sound like a shit hole. The kids there need some help, I can provide it, so I’m going for it.

I logged on to their site, which provides excellent options!, and found the perfect candidate. Fair enough, I had to reject 3 before I found him, but I finally got there, so I can’t complain. Consider the following; I blindly allowed World Vision to select candidates for me, but the first child was from the Dominican Republic! Do people not go there on holiday? This wouldn’t do, so I changed some of the search criteria so I would only receive kids from Africa. Things improved at this point, however, and I don’t want this to sound crude, the girl was just a little over weight. Now, can she really be in as much need as they say? I didn’t think so either, so I pressed on.

The next one was close, but no cigar. He was about right; clearly looked in need, but the name didn’t quite fit, I could hardly pronounce it, how could I possible speak about him if I couldn’t pronounce his name? Well, after a while, a gem of a kid came up, with a reasonably English sounding name, and I am now the proud sponsor of Jonathon! I even have a fridge magnet.

Obviously I am kidding, but this is exactly what went through my head when I went on to World Vision’s site. It almost stopped me from sponsoring as I found it hard to believe that anyone with a mind to try to help someone out would actually use search criteria to try to find the most needy, or more to the point the best fit for them. I did the random search with no criteria and sponsored the first kid that came up on the screen. The mere thought of skipping past him filled me with anger that the choice was even available!

It would be great to get some stats from World Vision to see how people go about finding their sponsor children and whether anyone seriously uses the search functionality provided to break the children down in to he/she, country, age etc…. I seriously hope, for my sanity alone, that most people do the same thing I did and just provide the money and let World Vision do the choosing.

Ignoring my rather cynical view of some people and their desire to ‘help’, I am making no joke about charity or World Vision, providing a little for those who have nothing is not hard, takes just a few minutes and makes a massive difference, do sponsor if you can: Worldvision

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 1:35 pm and is filed under aid, sustainable development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.