Poverty often makes it impossible for a child to meet their most basic needs, from nutritious food to medical care. It amplifies the risk of violence, exposes childrens’ bodies to harmful disease and hunger and burdens their hearts with hopelessness.
Poverty locks the door to a brighter future. But educational opportunities can open the door, helping children break the cycle of poverty in their lives.
Education Is Often Impossible to Access for Children in Poverty
Unfortunately, education is also an impossibility for many children living in poverty — and for many reasons.
Food and Other Needs Over Education
For families living in poverty, tuition, books and other supplies are luxuries they can’t afford. Instead, they must spend the resources they do have on more pressing needs, like food.
Working Over Education
Because of a lack of resources, many families need their children to help provide by working instead of attending school. Children must often work hard and dangerous jobs to bring income into the home.
Marriage Over Education
Pressing financial need moves some families to encourage girls to marry young, as marriage is often viewed as a path to financial security. Instead of attending school, the girls marry and begin raising children of their own.
Even when children can attend school, they often go hungry and malnourished. These children struggle to focus, impairing their ability to learn.
Without a quality education, children struggle to develop the skills necessary to find employment and improve their circumstances and those of their future families. A lack of education restricts a child’s ability to dream of a life beyond poverty.
You can make a difference. Learn how you can sponsor a child’s education.
Change a Child’s Life: Sponsor a Child’s Education
To access the education they need to thrive, children need nutritious food and clean water. They need school tuition and supplies. And they need the hope of Jesus to inspire them to move forward. You can provide all of this and more through child sponsorship.
Child Sponsorship and Education
Children registered in our Child Sponsorship Program receive access to a quality education. They’re given vocational training opportunities and apprenticeships so they can secure employment as adults. They also receive income-generation tools so they can start to provide for themselves using their God-given gifts.
In addition, sponsorship:
- Provides the financial aid needed for school expenses, such as textbooks, uniforms and tuition.
- Connects children with loving tutors, mentors and advisors.
- Offers an opportunity to practice literacy skills through message writing to sponsors.
- Provides nutritious meals, medical care and more to ensure healthy bodies and strong minds prepared for learning.
- Encourages children to use their God-given gifts within the community.
- Unlocks a child’s potential and helps release them from poverty in Jesus’ name.
For only $43 per month, you can sponsor a child living in extreme poverty and give them access to a life-changing education.
Want to learn more about child sponsorship? Learn more by visiting our Child Sponsorship FAQs.
The Power of Education: Shanti’s Story
Unlike most Bangladeshis, the Chakma Indigenous group speaks a tribal language. Not understanding Bengali puts the Chakma at a distinct disadvantage, namely, in public schools where only Bengali is spoken.
Education up to grade five is mandatory in Bangladesh, but children from minority tribal groups usually drop out shortly thereafter. They join their families in agricultural labor, prolonging the poverty cycle. But Shanti is different.
Shanti received sponsor support through Compassion. Among many benefits, sponsorship equipped her with the books, uniforms and monthly tuition fees needed for her educational programs.
Shanti accomplished something unheard of in her community with the help of her sponsor, the involvement of the local church and her passion for academics.
She is now trilingual, understanding not only Chakma but also Bengali and English.
Shanti has taken the gift of her education and is using it to give back to her community by tutoring her neighbor’s children for free. This extends the impact of her education and helps break the poverty cycle for more children.
Sponsor a child like Shanti today!