Child Sponsorship Programme for the Development of Marginalised Children

Abstract

Child sponsorship is a vital tool for development by transferring funds from rich countries
to children in developing countries. It supports the development of marginalised children
primarily through education. This article describes the outcome evaluation of a 10-year
intervention by a sponsoring agency in Kerala, India. The study evaluated the outcome
regarding self-esteem, achievement motivation and family functioning of the sponsored
children, adopting a post-test-only quasi-experimental design with a control group (CG).
Data were collected from 80 individuals (Intervention group [IG], n = 40 and CG, n = 40)
and analysed statistically using SPSS. The paired sample t-test rejected the null
hypotheses confirming the significant differences in the measure of variables for
participants in the IG and CG. The thematic analysis of qualitative data collected by
interviewing 10 child-mother dyads triangulated the quantitative results asserting the
positive outcome of the intervention.