Please stop giving money to World Vision. They are misleading you and they are misleading the people who they are trying to help. At the ripe old age of 32 not much blows my mind anymore, but this revelation did.
World Vision do not sponsor children. Yep, you heard that correctly. World Vision do not sponsor children. Although this might seem ridiculous, allow me to man-splain.
Misleading the donor – No sponsorship
The bedrock of World Vision is child sponsorship. The concept is simple and it makes sense. A donor pays a monthly amount of money, which pays directly for the child’s education and other important necessities like uniforms and healthcare.
So when you ‘sponsor’ a child through World Vision, do their school fees get paid? Do they get uniforms? Do they get health care?
The answer is a clear NO. The kid writes you letters, you send them cards, but none of the money you donate benefits that child directly. This might seems absurd, but it’s true. World Vision don’t publicise this clearly, but when you dig a little, they admit it outright. World vision do not sponsor children
“We believe true community development is not about providing money or even services. It lies in helping people discover their God-given potential as human beings, and working together to realize that potential.”
So instead of sponsoring a child, they instead run community projects involving water, education and development.
So why is that so bad?
First it is misleading. Child sponsorship sells and World Vision know it. They are raising money through selling the attractive vision of the donor transforming the life of the individual child they are connected to, but they are not delivering what they sell. They are downright dishonest.
Some of these children benefit from real sponsorship. Their schooling is paid for
Second, the community development work that World Vision do under the veil of child sponsorship, is unlikely to be effective. Here in Northern Uganda, rich World Vision workers drive expensive trucks, deliver trainings at fancy hotels and write reports espousing the great work they have done. There is little accountability, and no meaningful way to measure the outcome of their work. It is possible that many World Vision programs worldwide do close to zero good. The idea of focusing holistically on a community in order to bring sustainable transformation sounds and feels amazing, but it just doesn’t work.
And this comment just made me angry
“The goal of sponsorship in a community is to help break the cycle of poverty so children and families can step into the future with well-founded hope. When these goals are met, World Vision can move on to serve children with great need in other communities.”
The idea that an NGO can walk in, meet some development goals, fix the communities problems, celebrate and then move on to the next disadvantaged community is ridiculous. The deep seated socioeconomic issues In Northern Ugandan communities can’t be fixed by any NGO, even those far more effective than world vision. Of course we can make a difference and help people’s lives become better, but you can’t ‘fix’ a community in a few years. If you visit communities here that World Vision has been working with for years, you won’t find any objective difference between them and the next village over
Individual child sponsorship on the other hand works.
One study of children properly sponsored by the NGO Compassion, showed that “sponsored children realize 1.38 more years of schooling than their unsponsored siblings and 1.79 more years of schooling than their unsponsored peers”. Sponsored children were also more likely to get jobs. Other studies have shown similar positive results.
When 16 economists were surveyed, child sponsorship ranked 4th on their list of most effective interventions. I am not claiming that child sponsorship is necessarily the best way to spend money, but real sponsorship is effective, and transforms children’s lives.
Misleading the children – Exploit the most vulnerable
World Vision are piloting an ‘exciting, innovative new system’. Instead of the sponsor choosing the child, the child chooses the sponsor! They select the “most disadvantaged kids” in the community, put them in front of a photo board of smiling rich white people, and they select their sponsor. It seems like a great idea. Disrupting the system, turning the tide, shifting the power balance from the rich to the poor and all that.
Except that the process is a farcical and twisted public relations exercise. After the child chooses their ‘sponsor’, they do not benefit directly. It is not fair to pair a rich white Westener, with a poor Ugandan, when the poor Ugandan doesn’t get anything meaningful from the relationship, except a few letters. The poorest children are therefore exploited to raise money for a program which doesn’t directly benefit them. This makes me sick inside.
So World vision doesn’t sponsor children. Both the donor and the children are misled, and the money instead goes to unproven, money sink ‘community development’ programs
So what could World Vision do to change my mind?
- Get rid of the word sponsorship. Change your marketing. Start promoting your community programs, because that’s what you are doing, not sponsoring children.
- Allow external organisations to do meaningful research on your community programs and prove to me that they are doing more than zero good.
- Perhaps just go back to actually sponsoring kids. Nothing wrong with that!
And that’s why you should not give money to World Vision right now. There are so, so many other great ways to give and make a huge impact so why give your money to a dishonest, ineffective organisation?
I would love any questions or feedback about this, and if you agree with me I’d encourage you to share this and get the message out there.
Ugandapanda 
Thanks Nick.
A decade ago I worked for World Vision as one of the people that harasses you on the streets and tries to get you to sponsor a child.
I felt somewhat convicted by how we would market it as child sponsorship (because we knew that was good for marketing) while actually working at a community level rather than an individual level. However, I told myself that (a) I would try to be open and clear when explaining what people’s money would go towards, (b) insofar as people didn’t get this info, it would be because they didn’t really care to investigate further but just wanted to give their money to the cute kid in the picture, and it’s good marketing for these people – and we were doing good work, so good marketing raising lots of $ is a good thing and an efficient use of advertising resources, and (c) supporting community programmes is a more effective approach than helping individual kids. In fact, we were quite smug about not actually directly helping the individual sponsored child, unlike others like Tearfund.
We explained the community-based approach with a couple of main reasons: Firstly, we wouldn’t want a kid to miss out because they didn’t happen to have been chosen as one of the sponsored kids. I still have sympathy for this, but i’m sure there are ways to avoid it even in an individual support model. Also, I think when I would say this, I would be assuming that in a community-based approach, every individual kid in the community would get the kinds of help that sponsored kids get in an individual support approach (eg reduced education costs and better healthcare – but through running a school or clinic rather than paying for fees to existing services). But now that I think about it more closely, that’s probably not right.
The second reason was that “of course” it is more effective to set up development programmes at a community level rather than meeting direct needs for individuals. The logic is partly about economies of scale and systemic[local systems only] planning. But I think it’s also partly motivated by assumptions about dependency and victim-blaming (the idea that poor people can’t be trusted to do wise things with money). I have since learned that a lot of development programmes like this have little, if any, research evidence suggesting that they are effective, whereas direct money transfer approaches – which we would scoff at as simplistic and ineffective – often do have better evidence behind them. (And, as you note in this blog, direct child sponsorship on the Compassion/TearFund approach does too. The Christianity Today article actually mentions both WV and Compassion as examples of child sponsorship, but the research is about Compassion.) We would constantly say that our approach was more effective than supporting individual kids, but we were speaking out of ideology rather than evidence. And I now see that the ideology is largely insulting and patronising – the international equivalent of “don’t give money; give tightly controlled payment cards with strings attached”. It’s also basically magical thinking: the naive hope that WV can set up a bunch of programmes, operate them for 15-20 years, gradually hand them over to the local people and eventually leave them to run the programmes without continuing the flow of $, and expect the programmes to be able to solve all the problems for the people in the community so we don’t have to meet their individual needs.
I don’t know what the best way is for people like me to give money to the global poor. Do you?
I work for Unified for Uganda, registered as a non profit in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and operating in the Northern Uganda district of Gulu. We provide direct child education sponsorship to destitute children. Our main sponsors are High School students in the Cincinnati area and so we struggle with funds. We can’t even afford to put our beneficiaries in the best schools in the country or provide full sponsorship especially after secondary school! So to hear that large organisations like these are not doing what they promise is sad indeed! Yes, direct sponsorship leaves out many children in the short term, but in the long run, the same kids we give meaningful education to will help make the larger impact we want to see. It takes time, but it works! I would rather build one solid life at a time, than try to move masses with no real impact.
I urge everyone who has been donating to child sponsorship not to give up now. Please find an organisation that actually does child sponsorship and provides you actual progress reports on your sponsored child like Unified for Uganda. We may be small, but we do our work right!
Apwoyo matek Beatrice! Nyingi nen calo tye Acholi onyo kaka Lwo ma pat? That’s a fantastic response and a really good message. Great encouragement to find organisations that do it well and best wishes with Unified Uganda!
Agree, agree agree.
You raise some very valid points ie misleading, and querying the effectiveness.
I think it’s problematic to single out children for sponsorship within a community or family. Why not finance community projects/infrastructure that benefit the whole?
It’s always been the difficulty of who manages any funds – that requires considerable knowledge plus.
This is in line with the many problems of philanthropy and the ‘industry’ of donations and volunteering, and where the benefits fall. I don’t think there are easy answers. The problem always lies in the administration.
Thanks so much for the wise comments Valerie! I love the idea of financing community projects and infrastructure, but unfortunately in practise it unfortunately rarely achieves very much. Usuallty once the project ends, things go back how they were before the project. I’m definitely not saying Child Sponsorship is amazing or the ‘best way’, but at least there are tangible, measurable, enduring benefits down the line. Unfortunately even in community projects, one community benefits while the one next door doesn’t. You are right that administration is very, very important and there aren’t easy answers. I believe though that there are some better approaches though, which I share a little bit here https://ugandapanda.com/2017/06/16/ngo-part-4-give-your-money-well/
Even when you try to hide behind supporting communities and social infrastructure, (1)where are those infastructures (2) is your impact a true reflection of the millions of dollars raised through donations?
I have always concurred with this position. World vision is one of the oldest NGOs in Uganda (over 30 years) but it’s really hard to make sense of any visible contribution or impact on the ground. Going by the staff life styles, their administrative budget could be commanding as much as 80% of all donor funds and that explains the obscene salaries among other staff benefits. Because the organisation is a cash cow, top jobs are a preserve of the highly connected individuals.
The NGO called invisible children operated in Northern Uganda for approximately 5 years but their programs implementation was to the dot and extremely impactfull.
Compassion international is doing a commendable job in western Uganda by sponsoring education. I went to the University with many students who benefited and continue to benefit from this program. And that’s the kind of visible impact we are crying out loud for.
If donors don’t wake up and start carrying out physical audits and trail their donations to the dot, donor funds will continue serving interest of individuals who are out there to make a kill of such “free monies” at the expense of the children they purport to help and the communities they claim to support.
The shameless use of God’s name and photos of these vulnerable children to raise donations that actually in the end doesn’t truly reach them is an extortionate and fraudulent act that must be stopped at any cost.
I will not advocate for anyone to stop donating.after all, giving is an issue of the heart. But make an effort to ensure your donation does what it’s meant to do.
Thanks.
Wow thanks so much Tonny for this incredible comment. Your great insight is a tribute both to your and also a great testament to the support you received early on from Compassion. I love the point about the obscene staff salaries and benefits it’s so true! An interesting point is that most Western Organisations (like World Vision) don’t actually count their Ugandan Administration as part of their administration cost, only their Western administration! Is it OK if I post this comment on my facebook feed to share it with more people? (it’s fine if you don’t want!).
Dear Nick,
There’s a great discussion to be had about the most effective way to use child sponsorship funding.
World Vision understands the need to be accountable (https://www.wvi.org/accountability) – to the children, to the sponsor, to the Government, and voluntarily in our annual reporting. We evaluate our child sponsorship programming thoroughly – for instance, see this eight-country report which included Uganda (https://v.gd/caGQvB). We also invite external researchers to investigate our approach and act on their findings, as with this four-year, nine-country study (https://v.gd/178qoX) by four prestigious Universities.
You don’t have to “dig” far into any of our publications to find our description of our process and the reasons for it. From our Vision (“… for every child …”) to our child sponsorship description, https://www.wvi.org/child-sponsorship, we are clear that we are tackling the root causes which keep communities and children poor. This two-minute video (https://v.gd/QKJG3l) sums up the approach. Pooled sponsor money creates benefits for the whole community – including every sponsored child. A community-based approach means that, for every sponsored child (three million worldwide, last year), four more also benefit.
Spreading the benefits stops sponsored children from suffering the resentment of their unsponsored neighbours. Parents and communities work together to improve the well-being of their children so all are cared for, protected, in good health and receiving an education. We typically stay in a community for 15 years. Here in Uganda, 99% of our staff are locally hired, and most work every day in the local community. They are remunerated fairly, but wouldn’t recognise your description of them as ‘rich’. We are governed by a voluntary Board, all Ugandan. See the kind of work we do in our own annual report (https://v.gd/ZaF5Jv). Our in-country overhead rate is low for the sector, at 8% – and that’s externally audited.
The relationship which World Vision child sponsors form with their sponsored child is real, and the pooled approach to funding meets the highest standards of community development. We are committed to making improvements; our new approach (“Chosen”) of allowing children a say in the selection process maximises the agency and dignity of the sponsored child.
Finally, we take allegations of fraud, corruption and other abuse very seriously. If you, or anyone, have evidence or a genuine reason to suspect misuse of money or abuse of beneficiaries in any of our projects, I invite you to contact me. Or you can do it anonymously on our Integrity and Protection (“whistleblower”) hotline, https://v.gd/NlzZ7d.
Jason Evans, National Director, World Vision Uganda
I was pleased to see a response from World Vision. I for one had been crystal clear that our giving over many years had a community development focus. Also a friend was for some years a world vision journalist, globe trotting yes – but with familiar look of people who have seen very terrible things; and certainly not rich when he retired from the work. I remember well 25 years ago in seminary a liberal christian turning up his nose at World Vision Sponsorship (then I think more individual child focussed) as merely helping individuals and doing nothing about causes or community. Thus it is often in the great questions – the consensus swings one way and the other. I
Thank you very much Mr. Lewis for your response. Could you consider finishing the comment I think it all didn’t come through!
I have been a sponsor with World Vision for many years. I understand World Vision’s approach is to help the overall community as they have explained it through their status report What I found to be a direct impact to a child, is now World Vision offers the sponsor to send $ directly to their sponsored child(ren) up to $400 per year (w/ 25% allocated to the community, again spelled out clearly. One of our sponsored is using the funds to help their family to actually build a ‘home’; others have used the $ for uniforms, clothes, solar panel, lots of goats. One of our sponsored children even shared some of the funds with her good friend as they sent us their pictures and letters on how they share among each other. What a wonderful act of kindness to see. We will continue to sponsor children via WV and also give directly to the child(ren) and their families. So there is the option to have a direct impact to your sponsored child(ren). God bless.
Thanks Michael appreciate the response so much and it’s great that you have had such a good experience. My biggest issue was the use of the word and concept of “sponsorship” which is misleading. If world vision ditched the word and concept, and focused on community transformation, than they would at least be more honest, even if (as I discussed) the general approach to use a variety of methods to help the wider community though sounding great is an ineffective way to do aid. It sounds great but it doesn’t work. The sending money directly idea is a good one in principle, and much better than other world vision initiatives. Ther are however more well researched, efficient and effective ways to give money directly to people than through an organisation like world vision – see https://www.givedirectly.org/. God bless you too!
This discourages anybody to donate whether to children far away or to community projects. I’ve done some study in long term effects of different organizations focusing on a variety of aspects in community transformation, have visited some in person and experienced some as a volunteer myself. If they are investing in clean water, education and good values, they are doing amazing and those are pretty basic for children. Paying for their uniforms hits the surface, barely. It sounds to me they are actually trying to address the roots of the problems. And you are trying to stop them. “Uganda Panda”? Interesting marketing strategy by the way, since you mentioned marketing… How about you direct your efforts to building rather than destroying?
Thanks for the comment! I can see from this article how it might look like I’m discouraging people from giving, that wasn’t the intention and I could have made that more clear. I hope I’m not discouraging anyone from giving money far away – in fact I think people should give far far more. I’ll answer a couple of your criticisms. Unfortunately the obsession with addressing the “roots of the problems” sounds great in theory but in practise it hasn’t been shown to be effective. I love the phrase “An ounce of data is worth a thousand pounds of opinion.” For example direct cash transfers have proved more effective than psychotherapy, and often simpler solutions like paying school fees or buying uniforms have been shown to be more effective than attempts at transforming communities or addressing apparent root causes from a variety of angles. It’s not enough to try and address roots of problems, why not use proven interventions which are actually known to help? https://www.google.com/search?q=cash+transfers+vs+psychology&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS735US736&oq=cash+transfers+vs+psychology&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30j0i390l3.7377j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. So yes, I am trying to stop organisations like World Vision doing their current approach of a wide range largely ineffective interventions, especially when there’s a whole lot of other approaches which work far better. I’ve suggested a whole lot of positive stuff about where people should give their money in a positive sense. https://ugandapanda.com/2017/06/16/ngo-part-4-give-your-money-well/
I GOT A LOAN OF $20.000.00 ………………………
FROM THIS PRIVATE LOAN LENDERS…
THEY ARE LEGIT…..
Vanessa B
Gee
This article is upsetting.
I’ve been sponsoring a young boy in the Phillipines for 10 years. I send $35.00 and send higher money donations for Christmas, birthday and whenever I can
I dont want to stop out of fear that the person I sponsor actually gets his money
So what organization do you suggest?
Thank you
Francisco
Hi Francisco thanks so much for your concerns and sorry for the slow reply.
To encourage you, the Christmans and Birthday donations are supposed to 75% go to the child’s family at least, but they only apparently allow donations of $100 or more so I’m not sure what they do with your smaller donations… https://www.worldvision.org/sponsor-a-child/support-center/giving-special-gift#:~:text=In%20most%20sponsorship%20countries%2C%20you,be%20a%20minimum%20of%20%24100.
It’s super important to think about this stuff and good on you for following up on this.
I actually don’t know about good Child sponsorship organisations in the Philippines. Here in Uganda an organisation called Compassion International pays school fees, medical bills and sponsors specific actual children so they are an OK option.
Thanks for the comment again, and don’t be discouraged about giving money to good causes – it makes a big difference!
Nick
So what organizations do you recommend and not misleading ?
Great question thanks for replying, I’ve got some thought’s on it here. https://ugandapanda.com/2017/06/16/ngo-part-4-give-your-money-well/
I resent being coerced. Guilt tripped and shamed for being born into this not into that. I resent the …Won’t take no for an answer you spoilt western white person, give them your money NOW! Undertone. It’s manipulative and cruel to everyone involved. An organisation that has to use those tactics is not an honest caring or kind culture and it tarnishes those others who perhaps don’t push people around emotionally to get their quota. Right there there is a lack of ethics.
I was interested to here about the option of giving directly. Here in Australia we are told by World Vision:
“While we understand some sponsors would love to give more, we ask that you don’t send money directly to your sponsored child because it can have negative effects: Sending money to an individual child and/or their family doesn’t contribute to the long-term development goals of the sponsorship program.”
Occasionally I get calls or emails to send an extra “gift” but it always turns about to be a gift to a community project not the child I sponsor. In fact often the project isn’t even in the sponsor child’s country so clearly not even benefitting them at a community level.
I found out some time ago (but not until I had been sponsoring for quite a few years) that the money wasn’t benefiting the sponsor child directly. Prior to this I used to conscientiously achieve the extremely strict requirements by World Vision Australia regarding sending gifts directly to children (must fit in an A5 envelope, no this, no that). In ten years I received one photo of a child with a gift I sent.
I also at different times received photos that clearly were not my child (a male child about 2 when my female sponsor child was 8 for example) and drawings/scratchings which all looked the same. While I feel we used to receive a little more info, these days in all honesty we receive no information of any real consequence about our sponsor child or their community. The occasional “updates” are generic with images of children and communities with a catch all “projects like this are occurring in your sponsor child’s community.” In reality I have never received any evidence of what a single cent I have given to multiple children across 18 years has actually been used for.
After the revelation that my money wasn’t actually directly helping the sponsor child I stopped sending gifts. I worried that from the child’s view they are struggling for survival and some first world woman sends… an inflatable beach ball. I also allowed the three child sponsorships I was funding (while a single parent struggling to keep a roof over my own children’s heads I might add) to drop to one. As programs ended And I was asked to sponsor a different child I said no. We have only one sponsor child now.
I don’t intend to stop sponsoring simply because I share your concerns that ultimately my donation is doing little. This is an important point to note for those claiming your article discourages sponsorship. My logic is purely idyllic – that perhaps a child knowing that far away someone is thinking of them and their welfare, might have a positive impact on that child’s life and the choices they make as a young adult. But let’s face it… it’s a flimsy notion at best.
I have been sponsoring our current child for about a decade. I expect in the next few years I’ll be told World Vision is leaving their community and I’ll be asked to sponsor a new child. I’ve decided my answer will be no. This doesn’t mean I will stop giving. However I would like to explore how I could donate to the third world in a way that is more transparent, allowing me to see a tangible benefit.
Thank you for your article. It was not a revelation. It will not make me immediately stop my child sponsorship, as I’ve noted, but it does concur with all the first hand experience I’ve had with world vision.
Thank you so much Yvette for this beautiful and well thought through comment. Perhaps I should have asked you to write some of this article! I love your intelligent and caring commitment to the welfare of poor children across the world, and your process of considering how to give money better.
This statement you sent from Australia really hit me as a great demonstration of the misleading nature of World Vision’s advertising.
“Sending money to an individual child and/or their family doesn’t contribute to the long-term development goals of the sponsorship program.” seems to me a strange admission that they don’t really sponsor children at all, while still wanting to call their program sponsorship.
Ass you allude to, one potentially beautiful thing about “pure” child sponsorship (supporting one child’s school fees, medical bills is that you can see the results over time and stay connected to your giving”. There is an organisation “Compassion international” which I have seen working at a number of sites here in Northern Uganda which does do direct child sponsorship and might be an option in future.
Thanks so much again.
I don’t know what to say. I sponsored a number of children through World Vision, for a period of almost twenty years. I put my favorite child through private high school and then nursing school. I received pictures, progress reports, when I sent an extra gift, always received photo and letter with family showing what my money had paid for. ALWAYS the same family. I got a photo of my sponsored child at her college graduation with her certificate. Only once in all those years do I remember getting a questionable letter where it was not my sponsored child. That was from a girl in Ecuador if I remember correctly. I do not donate anymore, because after almost twenty years and twelve children, including putting one through nursing school, I feel like I’ve raised my children. I’ve done my bit. Even after the earthquake in Haiti, I got a letter from my Haitian child which really surprised me, since I thought the place would be too torn up and wasn’t expecting a response at all. So, don’t know what to say. I believe you, but my sponsorship experience was good.
Thanks so much Lisa for the comment! Your words are a testament to the power of real child sponsorship. I’m guessing when you started sponsorship 15-20 years ago, World Vision were indeed sponsoring children through schools. It may have been 10-15 years ago when they stopped enrolling new children in that program.
So I think you can rest assured that yes you did really sponsor those children – my complaint is about the misleading nature of what they do after they more recentl changed from sponsoring individual children to funding general community projects.
Thanks again for your reply.
Thank you for sharing this! The videos and so forth I received from the child I was sponsoring seemed so eerily exploitative that I stopped opening any World Vision email communications and eventually canceled as a donor and give elsewhere.
Thanks Caro – encouraging that you are still giving great to hear 🙂
Hi,
I was looking into the sponsorship. Cause Ive been sponsoring via Chosen (from World Vision, the Netherlands) It is a specific sponsorship to sponsor childs who chooses you (instead you choose them)
But from the get go of the sponsorship I just got this gut feeling that there is something off. Today I got two emails congratulating me with the sponsoringship of this specific child as if I just started, but that was a long time ago that I started. and I got an email with no name in it (just those amazing emails that are programmed in)
So I’m looking into the matter, but cannot find anything yet about their program Chosen. (outside of what they are saying about it) But I don’t know I just cannot get it over my heart o just stop the sponsorship, cause if there is a tiny chance I’m really sponsoring this child.
But yeah I really would like to know if I sponsor a specific child or not. Otherwise I want to stop it if not. How should I handle this research? As you have already done a fair share of it
Thanks so much for the question, its fantastic that you have thought hard about this and investigated. As I discussed in the article, World Vision don’t “sponsor” children, in the way that most people would think of the word. They do NOT pay school fees, support healthcare or give any direct help to individual child. The money you are currently giving goes to general commuity development projects in the area that the child lives in. The child you sponsor may or may not benefit from those projects directly.
I think that these general community development projects are not as effective as sponsoring individual children, but others may disagree.
Regardless, you aren’t sponsoring a specific child, and yes the World Vision website still seems almost intentionally vague about this.
https://www.wvi.org/child-sponsorship
Here in Uganda, if you want to sponsor a specific child and assist with their. The only issue might be for some people that they are a strongly Christian organisation, so if you don’t like that it might be a deal-breaker.
https://www.compassion.com/.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica in the ‘90s and World Vision would come to my little village (when they knew I would be away), dirty the poorest looking children & take photos of them. Their families would show me cards from their “sponsors” to have me translate. Their sponsors wrote things like, “I hope you can use this money towards your uniform and books this year”. Sadly not one of the kids or their families received any money whatsoever. I found out Workd Vision had one of the only air conditioned buildings in the city nearest my village and their field staff all drove very high end Toyota Hi-lux cars, paid for by World Vision. When asked where the sponsor’s money went, the field workers refused to give me answers. Fast forward 10 years, I was working for a large for-profit management consulting firm who flew me 1st class to Asia for a business meeting. Who is seated right next to me in 1st Class?… the President of World Vision. He was flying 1st Class fare and not a single one of the sponsors kids or families received any of the money they donated. I had quite a conversation with this man and I’m still beyond upset knowing this happens and also knowing how it is able to happen with one of the largest nonprofits in the world. There are so so so many other worthy nonprofits to donate to, please please please think twice about giving to World Vision as your donated money will not directly benefit the kids and their families who you think you are sponsoring. I witnessed this all with my own eyes and it made me so very sad, especially knowing how much these kids and their families could have really used those generous donations.