A pioneer of child sponsorship for 75 years

They were also asked to write letters to the child to show them that someone cared about them. This was the beginning of what is today’s oldest child sponsorship programme operated by Plan International which is now a worldwide organisation.
Esme Odgers, one of Plan's original founders, established the process for sustaining the relationships, ensuring letters and parcels were delivered and acknowledged. She explained in 1939, ‘The terrific ‘personalness’ of the Plan is very exacting. But what else is there in life? – to help our comrades in distress with warmth and understanding, not with cold charity’.
Those embryonic beginnings of child sponsorship originated from the insight that a personal connection is a powerful tool for change.
Sponsorship todayAfter decades of experience, Plan is well placed to know what works and what doesn’t. for this reason, the actual funding element of individual sponsorships is pooled rather than given to the child or his /her family. This means that today’s sponsorship contributions benefit whole communities through long-term development work, and the one-to-one nature of the connection through communication provides support and encouragement on an individual level.
Plan today fosters those relationships – bringing individuals into contact across the globe, forming a worldwide community aware of, involved in and united around the needs and rights of girls and boys. Sponsorship provides flexible, long-term funding for community development work, meaning that local communities can plan ahead. It keeps us in touch with individual children and their families and increases community understanding of issues affecting children. And we understand that children need to be involved in their community’s development so we champion and reinforce this role through sponsorship.
Seeing the difference you makeThe young people in communities where Plan works produce materials sent to sponsors so they get to express their views and reflect on issues that affect them. The detailed updates Plan distributes show sponsors how their support makes a lasting difference, and make global development issues real by relating them to individual people and local situations.