Give and Take? Child Sponsors and the Ethics of Giving

Abstract

It is self-evident that child sponsorship (CS) should be set up to benefit the lives of its recipients in some way. Plan UK assures potential sponsors that ‘Your donations help a whole community through funding projects such as building schools, digging wells and providing vaccinations’ (Plan UK, 2013). Compassion UK argues that in its direct benefit programme ‘the faithful financial support of the individual sponsor equips the child for the future by providing for their core needs’ (Compassion UK, 2013). SOS Children, which provides homes for orphaned and abandoned children, explains its vision as ‘a loving home for every child’, where sponsorship provides children with ‘new families for life’ (SOS Children, 2013). Despite its varying setups, then, CS is unfailingly sold as a charitable act that can make a tangible difference to beneficiaries. Its success is measured and marketed accordingly, often (for instance) through ‘success stories’ of sponsored children who have become high achievers, or through statistics about community welfare. Understandably, then, debates about sponsorship focus mostly on its material and social impacts on recipients, with attention rarely paid to its other dimensions. And yet, sponsorship constructs meaning in more ways than one, shaping and impacting international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) themselves, and drawing together beneficiaries and INGOs with sponsors in sponsorship ‘relationships’.