The Children We Serve

Poverty is a place where there is a scarcity of hope, and an excess of fear.

Affordable, healthy food is in short supply, while parasites and disease thrive. Opportunities are rare, and dangers and negative influences lurk around every corner.

With parents struggling to make ends meet on a few dollars a day, it is all too common for impoverished children to go to bed hungry.

Their bare, calloused feet, dirt-caked faces and tattered clothes tell their story of struggle.

For many, education is considered a luxury. Lacking such things as school supplies or uniforms can keep a poor child from attending school.

Oftentimes, medical and dental care is unavailable or difficult to access, let alone afford. Simple, preventive ailments like diarrhea can be deadly when you are a poor child.

The children we serve are as diverse as the people who sponsor them across Kenya.

What binds them together is their universal fight to rise above their desperate circumstances and to live with dignity.

Selection Criteria

Although poverty is the overriding condition that brings children into our program, they must fulfill specific requirements for enrollment, including:

• Be in a state of economic hardship.
• Be living in an area where there are other children currently sponsored, or where other children are available for sponsorship so that we may deliver sponsorship benefits as efficiently as possible.
• Be in a stable enough environment that permits consistent and long-term contact between the child and our field staff.
• Be living in an accessible area and within a reasonable distance, permitting consistent contact between the child and our field staff.
• There can be no more than four sponsored children in any family.
• Heads of families must cooperate in order to meet the basic administrative requirements of sponsorship, including letter-writing, photos and family records.

In addition to these criteria, we also rely on something far more abstract…the expertise of volunteers and local administration (Village elders, assistant chiefs and chiefs) to determine which children are living with the greatest need. This helps make the selection process fair, ensuring that help goes to those who need it most urgently. There is never any discrimination based on race, religion, social background or any other factor. The bottom line is to help as many children and families as possible, reaching out to the poorest of.

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