11 thoughts on “Sri Lanka: Meeting A Sponsored Child”

  1. But if World Vision is about to leave where you are now, what is going to improve for Afra? How will they, as Tony Jones hopes, check her progress in school or see that she gets medical care? Whatever advantage she personally got from sponsorship will end when World Vision leaves.

    I can understand how life may well improve for a village as a whole, but Afra’s handicap isn’t going away, and her prospects for marriage or ability to earn a living remain dismal.

    It’s not that I doubt the good World Vision can do in communities, but I do wonder where Mr. Jones finds his optimism for his sponsored child.

    1. Jean,

      I should have given this some explanation so it’s my fault that you’re confused. The area that Afra lives in is a brand new ADP (area development project) that has only been running for about six months so they’ll be in the area for about fourteen more years. The one I referenced that shut down is in a different location.

      But more to the point you’re making, World Vision will not be leaving this area until local organizations and people are locally funded and empowered to handle these aid projects themselves without outside help. So if Afra’s community still needs help at that point, she will be able to get help from her own neighbors.

      The entire strategy that World Vision is using is built on the principle of “working yourself out of a job.” World Vision comes in, they ask the community what needs to be done, they empower local community organizations that already exist to do that work, and then once things are running in a sustainable fashion they bow out.

      I’ll actually be visiting a completed project today that is completely community-managed, so I’ll be posting more about that concept in the next few days.

      1. Thanks for the explanation, Darrell. That makes so much more sense. It’s fantastic that World Vision will be working with these people for another fourteen years, and things will be able to be managed by local organizations by the time they leave.

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