Essay question: “to what extent do you think the 1980s criticisms by New Internationalist still apply to child sponsorship?”
Child sponsorship remains one of the most popular oversea aid programs, in wealthy countries. It gives the impression of direct engagement with people in developing countries and raised more than eight billion dollars per year. Yet it has long been criticised as paternalistic, creating dependence and a range of other social problems.
A first critique by New Internationalist magazine was in 1982, where it was argued: “in almost every other way in which the donor is better off through a sponsorship scheme, the sponsored child or family is correspondingly worse off.” The programs are expensive to run, divisive in communities and foster dependence.
In 1989 the magazine set out several basic defects in the schemes, by (1) creating family rifts (2) making children political pawns (3) maintaining dependence (4) sowing cultural confusion (5) perpetuating ignorance (6) led to disappointed sense of liberation (7) creating frustrated desires (8) wasteful spending, and (9) fostered racism. A PDF of this article can be found below.
New Internationalist repeated this call in 2022, asking “Please continue to not sponsor this child“, adding “it is NOT better than nothing”.
World Vision, the largest sponsor of these programs, says child sponsorship has evolved over the years, taking into account some of these criticisms.
Read all these (and other) sources and give a reasoned answer to this question” “to what extent do you think the 1980s criticisms by New Internationalist still apply to child sponsorship?”
