Compassion UK celebrates 100,000 children sponsored

Child development charity, Compassion UK, this week celebrated seeing 100,000 children sponsored through their organisation when Michael and Sarah Barton from near Burford, Oxfordshire, sponsored Loveline from Haiti at the Big Church Night In event in Oxford.

For 15 years, Compassion UK has been introducing children living in the vulnerability of poverty to a sponsor. Speaking at the event, internationally renowned social justice campaigner, Danielle Strickland, said, “So many of us think that poverty is an issue, but Compassion shows us that poverty has a face and a name.”

Sponsorship not only builds a loving, encouraging relationship between the sponsor and child, but enables the child to visit their local church project at least once a week. It means the child no longer goes to bed hungry, attends school regularly and receives all the medical care they need.

“We all dream of making the world a better place,” says Bekah Legg of Compassion UK, “For 100,000 children that dream has become a reality because people in the UK have chosen to see them and support them.

“As excited as we are to reach 100,000, our focus isn’t on the zeros, it’s on the one. It’s easy to lose the individual in the statistics but everything we do is about recognising one child at a time, knowing them by name and enabling them to flourish.”

Compassion UK is marking the occasion by creating a scholarship for nurse training on the Island of La Gonave in Haiti. Justin Dowds, senior Director of Compassion UK explains, “We thought about how we wanted to celebrate this achievement, and realised it’s not really about those of us working in the office. What we do has always been about the children and it seemed fitting to provide a new learning opportunity for the children in our programme that will not only develop them, but go on to benefit the whole community.”

For more information, photographs and interviews contact Ella Dickinson: ellad@compassionuk.org