Did you know I had 5 children?

In honour of World Vision Week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell you about my children. All of them are sponsored via World Vision, but there are lots of other child sponsorship schemes around, including Plan-UK, Action Aid and EveryChild.

I first agreed to sponsor Sinqobile over 10 years ago, when she was 5 years old and I was still at university. She's an AIDS orphan and lives in Zimbabwe, in World Vision's Sanzukwi Area Development Programme. She is currently in high school and enjoys maths and science. Last year World Vision opened a health centre in the area where Sinqobile lives. The regime in Zimbabwe, as you know, is appalling, to the extent that contact with other countries is strictly monitored. Every time I receive correspondence from Sinqobile or from World Vision Zimbabwe, it is postmarked South Africa.


In 2003, I started sponsoring Drilon when he was almost 3. He lives with his parents, grandmother and older brother in a 2-room flat in the village of Balldren, which is in Lezha, a fairly remote mountain region in north- western Albania, near the Adriatic coast. The area is the poorest in Albania and unemployment and crime rates are high. Drilon started school last year in the newly renovated local primary school, and when he's not at school he likes playing with toy cars and riding his bike. He is now 6½ years old and from his photos, looks very mischievous...

I took on two children in 2005 - the first was Thi My Le, from Hiep Duc, a small village in the Quang Nam province of central Vietnam, where roads are poor and travelling is difficult. World Vision is helping to improve transportation links in the area, to allow people easier access to schools and hospitals. Thi My Le is now 11 and goes to Kim Dong school where she enjoys maths and singing. Last year World Vision gave her a school bag for starting secondary school, which included a uniform, pencils and notebooks. This meant that her family could spend the money they would have spent on school supplies on something else. She is in good health, enjoys playing badminton and would like to be a teacher when she grows up.

The second child I took on in 2005 was Christhian, from Bolivia, which is South America's poorest country, but Christhian's family moved away from the World Vision project a few months after I started sponsoring him, so my sponsorship was switched to another Bolivian boy, Damian, last year. He lives with his parents in Tacopaya, a mountainous region in Bolivia, where 12,000 people live in poverty. Damian's parents graze animals and keep donkeys, and Damian goes to a local school and likes playing with his friends. He is now 12 and helps out at home by running errands for his family.

Early this year, World Vision gave me Mmatsole, a 5-year-old girl from South Africa. She lives with her mother in Kodumela, a village in the north of the country at the foot of the Drakensburg Mountains, near the border with Mozambique. She is of school age, but there are no schools in the area - one of World Vision's first priorities here is to open a school - so she helps her mother with the shopping and enjoys playing with toys.




I love sponsoring my children - a relatively small amount of money can help so much. Every year I receive updates from the Area Development Programmes that cover the areas where my children live, and it's great to see health centres, schools and community creches being built, and to read about the provision of training in more effective farming methods, sewing, carpentry and brick making. If you don't sponsor a child and can spare £18 a month (or even if you already do sponsor a child and can afford to take on another one), visit World Vision UK or World Vision USA for more information.