International Day for Street Children 2024 is on Friday, April 12, 2024: Child sponsor ship info?

Friday, April 12, 2024 is International Day for Street Children 2024. Street Children‎ See how StreetInvest helps Street Children around the world

I sponsor through Plan International, and am very happy with it

You need to consider whether you want your money to go to a child alone, or an orphanage, or to an entire community. A reputable organisation should tell you exactly how many pence/cents per pound/dollar go to administration, and how many to the child/orphanage/community. Plan puts the money into community projects so the entire community can become self sufficient and they can move on and help another group of people. They don't give money to individual children because it would only help one person, and everyone else would get really jealous. All of the children live with their family still. But other organisations work with orphans or former street kids, and you give money to the orphanage or into an account specifically for the child.

I don't have any limit on how many letters I can write, and I can include photos, although I can't send gifts. I get all my letters translated for me. You need to check whether Action Aid will translate the child's letters, otherwise you won't be able to read them without paying somebody to translate for you. I get an update with two photos of the child and her parents every year. I can even go out and visit her if I like for a day!!

Different countries have different needs. Some communities need help with getting clean water and growing sufficient food, others need more training for girls so they can be independent and not rely on men, others need training on issues like child abuse, domestic violence. Some need more teachers and better resources for schools. You can ask your organisation about what they are doing in different countries right now. I was able to pick whether I wanted to sponsor a boy or girl, and what area of the world e.g. Africa, or Latin America. I now sponsor a girl in the Caribbean

Good luck, and thanks for doing this, it's been a fantastic experience for me!

International adoption situation?

I know from my personal experience and personal observations in India that in many cases older children are living on the streets before they come into contact with the orphanages. The police bring them in after making cursory checks for family. Many of these children don't even know the names of their birth parents and it's routine for some of the lower caste people to only have one name. I had one person working in my home as a driver who only knew that he was "Kami (Kamesh), son of Raju" and that he was from Raigarh in UP, India.

Now, if you go to that village (although it may be more then a village for all I know) I bet you would find plenty of Raju's with son's named Kamesh. Imagine now that the person didn't even know that much about their past. I would imagine that in many parts of China it can be that way too.

The system in many of these countries seems pretty archaic by our standards, and by our standards it is. At the same time however it works for them and who are we to impose our standards on their country. Room for improvement? Plenty, no doubt about it, but there has to be the will and the ability within the country to change things.

I look at the info we have on our daughter that we adopted from overseas. Born to an unwed mother (actually, it states on her forms that she was the illegitimate daughter of an unwed mother). Brought to the orphanage in rural India (one run by Mother Theresa's organization) between 24-48 hours after delivery. Give or take a bit owing to what ever time she may have been born and delivered. And 3 months later transported to New Delhi to one of their main orphanages there. She came to us at 8 months old and sometime between when she arrived in Delhi and when we brought her home she was shipped to Calcutta (called Kolkara now) and back temporarily when polio worked it's way through the orphanage. They had identified her as having a minor heart problem (a fast heart rate) and a minor skeletal problem (a divot at the bottom of her sternum) however Canadian doctors have never found any evidence of a problem. She was very malnourished (10 lbs at 8 months) but we quickly dealt with that when she came to us however and there are some lingering cognitive issues because of the malnourishment, nothing that we can't work to accommodate though.

Other then that, we have nothing for that 8 month period of her life other then one photo taken when she was 3 months and arrived in Delhi. No notation on the ID of the birth parents, their caste, their profession/job, their medical history, their language (of the many in India) or anything else. We have a notation that she was Hindu but her name was Muslim in origin. Not an uncommon occurrence but then again....who knows. Most of what we do know was because we were living in India during the time we adopted and I kept my eyes and ears open during the process but that was still all I was able to get.

What you are seeing from China doesn't sound much different then what we went through. In many cases they just don't know the info to put in the files. Things like that are viewed differently in many of these countries and you have to avoid taking such an ethnocentric view of things and just request as much info as you can, make a sound decision with your head (keeping your heart in check as best you can) and pray for the best knowing that you will make things work for all concerned.

Invisible Children.?

This is the name of a movie.

Warning ... most movies, even alleged documentaries, reflect opinions of the producers and writers, may be biased or distorted. You need to make an effort to find independent sources for the kind of information presented in the movie.

The movie is on the impact of children being kidnapped in Uganda to become child soldiers, a problem that occurs in many nations, such as The Sudan.

In 20-30 nations, there are armed conflicts in which there are forceable drafts of very young children to become cannon fodder in the conflict ... slave soldiers. An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 such children are currently involved, not yet killed, in which constantly more are being "recruited" to replace the ones that are killed.

These children, if they live, are denied a childhood, a normal process of growing up. What happens to the survivors is worse than being abused by a pedophile.

The kidnappings or abductions of the children to become slave soldiers can occur:

* to kids hanging out at the mall

* to entire classrooms at a school

* off the streets and playgrounds

* from day care and baby sitting services

They are not just used as soldiers.

Girls get gang raped on a regular basis

youngsters get to walk in front of adult soldiers so that they get blown up by mines, then other kids get to take their places

Human Rights Watch has interviewed child soldiers in: Angola, Burma, Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda. Some of them were fighting there, some of them escaped to where they were interviewed.

Human Rights Watch also has FAQ (see links below) on the use of Child Soldiers in: Angola, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Columbia, Congo, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Uganda, West Africa, and other places.

There is an effort through the UN to get an international treaty banning the use of child soldiers below some age, such as 10, unless they knowingly volunteer to serve, with their parent's permission.

I tried to access the "Invisible Children" web site but it is hostile to anyone not using the latest Internet software,

Key words in search engines

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Invisible Children

Invisible Children Inc

Child Soldiers

Rights of Children