Sponsor a Child with SOS Children UK
The world's largest orphan charity
Child Sponsorship is a great way to help children in need. In return you can see the real impact that your support has made. Our sponsors often tell us of the warm satisfaction of seeing a little girl or boy with nothing grow up into an independent happy person thanks to child sponsorship.
You can choose, from about 100 of the countries in which SOS Children works, the country in which you would like to sponsor by clicking on the maps at our Child Sponsorship Directory, or you can leave us to decide where the need is greatest at present. Some countries, such as India and South Africa, recruit sponsors in their own countries as well as having external sponsors.
If you sponsor through SOS Children UK, you help us to provide a home and a new family for an orphan; you help give a future to a child without hope. Sponsor a child with SOS Children, and you will be helping orphaned or abandoned children to grow up in a family with a mother, brothers and sisters, and a home of their own. You will be able to write to them and learn how they grow up with love. You will also be helping us to help other orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children and their families in the local communities. For £20 a month (the cost in the UK of sponsoring a child), you can help children who have nothing and no-one. Sponsor online here for UK donors.
Alternatively for donors outside the UK: Guide to sponsoring a child from around the world (http://sponsor-a-child.org.uk).
Child sponsorship admin costs
No deductions are made from the sponsors' payments for administration. We are very grateful for work done by office volunteers in our Cambridge office, which helps keep our costs low. Our administrative costs will be met by unrestricted donations and from tax we recover through Gift Aid. All sponsorship payments therefore go 100% to the charity's work for and around the sponsored child. For other details, including our response to occasional objections raised, see our Child Sponsorship FAQs.
Sponsoring African AIDS orphans
The children in our villages are children whose parents are not there for them. If you sponsor a child in Africa, in particular, the chances are quite high that have been orphaned due to HIV/AIDS, although for social reasons and to avoid stigmatisation we help any child who has lost his or her parents without establishing the cause of death etc.
However, perhaps 80% of the HIV/AIDS orphans we help are supported in their own family homes and it is only possible to sponsor children who live with us in one of our villages(mainly for reasons of administration cost). If you would like to support HIV/AIDS orphans in the community please just make a regular donation to SOS and specify what you would like it to be used for.
We keep looking after the children until they are old enough to be independent: we stay long after the cameras have left. Our sponsors get regular news and contact from their child, and as they get older you are welcome to write to them, visit them or send them small gifts at Christmas. If you would like more of an idea of what is involved, why not read Sponsor/Child Testimonials or phone us up for a chat? We are always happy to explain how sponsorship works in practice and answer particular questions. When you complete the forms online you can fill in instructions in the form or request that we contact you. At any given time you can choose to sponsor children in most of our 440 villages, and in almost all of the 125 countries where we help children, but we can guide you where the current need is greatest. You can also state preferences on the age etc of the child you would prefer, or even if you have visited one of our projects and know the name of a particular child, we will try to accommodate you. If there is anything in the sponsorship material which you do not like you are free to cancel your direct debit at any time, and all payments for sponsorship are covered by the direct debit guarantee.
Whenever we see a little boy or girl in desperate need around the world the natural instinct is to go and help them; but thinking through the practicalities prevents this from happening... we have commitments here, they often speak another language, and it is just not cost-effective or sensible to rush out and try to help a single child. Sponsorship is a natural extension of this instinct, but by sponsoring through a charity like SOS children you are able to ensure someone from the local community helps the liitle one in the best possible way to them. It is the right way to fulfil our instincts to help. So, why not sponsor now? Many people sponsor children with us to match the ages of their own children or grandchildren; it can be a great way to keep children in touch with the greater world picture and of the ways in which we are relatively fortunate in general in the first world. It is also possible to support a whole village and be kept informed about the community as a whole.