Make a difference

According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That's one every 3 seconds, 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.
According to the statistics there are 2.2 billion children in the world. Almost half live in poverty (1 billion). 1.9 billion of these children live in the developing world. 1 in 3 (640 million) are without adequate shelter, 1 in 5 (400 million) are without access to safe water, 1 in 7 (270 million) have no access to health services. There are an estimated 120 million children out of education.

When it comes to child mortality, 10.6 million children died before the age of 5 in 2003 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy). 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized. 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom).

Basic education for all would probably cost around 6 billion $US. That 2 billion less that the US spends on cosmetics and 5 billion less that Europeans spend on ice cream. Military spending in the world is 780 billion.

Basic education, health care and safe water would cost an estimated 28 billion dollars. That's less than 4% of the military budget.

All these numbers can seem overwhelming and leave you feeling like there's nothing you can do that could ever make a difference. But you'd be wrong.

For less than £20 a month (40$), you can change a child's life through a sponsorship programme. Sponsorship helps to break the cycle of childhood poverty, through education, health and welfare. Often, child sponsorship is connected to a wider project in a local community. You not only change the life of a child, you are influencing change in a community.

Go on, make your own dent in those numbers!

Compassion; World vision

For UK readers:

Compassion; World vision