Every day, around 5,700 more children are orphaned. In any community, orphans are always one of the most vulnerable groups, often facing hunger, disease, exploitation, psychological distress, and extreme cycles of poverty that they need help to break out of.
Our orphan sponsorship programme helps 18,495 children to build brighter futures in nine countries. Supporters sponsor an orphan on a one-to-one basis, helping to cover the costs of their food, shelter, healthcare, and learning materials. To qualify for this help, the child must stay in school, ensuring they gain the education and skills for a better tomorrow.
How much is our admin fee?
It costs £35 per month to sponsor one orphaned child – supporting the cost of their food, shelter, healthcare, clothing, and learning materials, and easing the load on their caregiver. When you donate £1, just 9p goes into keeping Human Appeal running.
Another 13p goes back into raising funds – that allows us to be ready to raise awareness at a moment’s notice when tragedy strikes. Between 2019 and 2021, we grew our income by a huge 186%, allowing us to support an extra 2.8 million people, by raising funds through that small 13 pence.
Finally, and most importantly, 78p out of every £1 you donate goes straight to helping the child you sponsor.
Charity is a gift, offering endless mercy to those who give, as well as mercy to the vulnerable people who receive it. Our admin fee helps us to get your donation to where you intended it. That’s why we like to think of it as the stamp on the envelope of your mercy.
How does our admin fee support this project?
All children have the right to protection, safety, and dignity. The portion of your donation that is spent on admin is vital to the safety and security of each orphan we help. It allows us to implement vigorous and continuous safeguarding checks, internal audits, monitoring, and policies to help ensure that all children are protected from harm and that our staff and partners never exploit their position of trust and responsibility.
It’s also what covers the cost of our awareness and protection sessions with children, giving them the knowledge to protect themselves and their rights
Our admin fee means all reports and complaints are addressed rigorously through our streamlined mechanisms and that our safeguarding policies and procedures are accessible to all those who work with us, and reviewed and updated every six to nine months, ensuring continued improvement. Our ongoing evaluation deepens a sense of accountability, allowing it to learn and improve our orphan care.
It’s what allows us to create independent safe spaces for the vulnerable women and girls (and men and boys) to allow for complaints and accountability, which we continually assess to make sure they are comfortable places fit for purpose. It’s also what allows us to train staff to gather information and interviews in an ethical and sensitive manner.
Our admin fee allows us to be transparent about our measures that protect children, so that our supporters can give with confidence, knowing that their donation is in safe, responsible hands.
The day-to day work our staff do with orphans, supported by our admin fee, allowed us to increase the number of orphans sponsored by a massive 47 per cent - from 12,563 in 2020 to 18,495 in 2021.
Human Appeal has zero-tolerance of any harm towards children. When hiring employees who may be around children, we perform background checks, and we have rigorous field policies to protect the privacy and rights of children. Anyone who works with us overseas must sign a conduct agreement agreeing that they are never alone with beneficiaries, especially women and children.
All of this is only possible through our admin fee. Shazia is our orphans and child welfare programme manager in Pakistan, and a global safeguarding advisor. She’s a qualified lawyer who has 26 years of experience across 20 countries, specialising in child rights, safeguarding, gender and inclusion. Let’s hear from Shazia on how our admin fee helps to protect and safeguard children.
I work with orphaned children directly, and I write policies, procedures and strengthening safeguarding standards so that every child is protected and not exposed to further risk due to our interventions. Right now, I’m rolling out safeguarding programmes, policies, and processes. I’m also working on our Safeguarding Manual, Safeguarding Policy review, risk assessments, child protection standards and complaint response for incident handing. These updates are now being rolled out across the entire Human Appeal family.
So how does Human Appeal safeguard children? We conduct a thorough risk assessment of all our programmes before we even start. We have a mitigation plan to help staff implement programmes with care. During recruitment, we check staff police records and references, and introduce them with thorough training on safeguarding, child protection, whistleblowing and compliance.
We have a designated child protection coordinator in every country we work in, who ensures that our Child Protection Policy is followed.
Locally in Pakistan, we’ve introduced an impartial, confidential complaint response mechanism at every household that we work in, so that they always know how to raise complaints. Each project has a clearly visible complaints number that beneficiaries can use as a reference.
We also take into consideration safeguarding during aid distributions, ensuring that the most vulnerable people don’t have to travel far to benefit from our project.
We hold regular staff safeguarding sessions, as well as child protection training for widows. We also provide child-friendly info packs to each sponsored orphan’s caregiver so that they are empowered to understand protection issues.
And the reason we do all this? Because it’s what helps us to change an orphans life, without putting them at risk. It’s the most rewarding part of my job when I see a sponsored orphan, or their mother, not only living a happier, safe life, but empowered to be independent thanks to our careful programming.
21-year-old Iqra lost both her parents, and was forced look after her three younger siblings.
“When our father died, we felt like we lost our shelter. Once our mother died, too, we felt completely alone, like we were a burden on the world.
“I had to look after my younger brothers and sister as I’m the eldest. We often went hungry. We spent many days and nights without food, but I never once begged.
“Just surviving was challenging, it was difficult for us to stay alive.
“My siblings would fight with each other over the smallest things because we had nothing to eat. They even fought over clothes.”
But how has our orphan sponsorship programme helped Iqra?
When Iqra’s brother was sponsored by a Human Appeal supporter, their lives were transformed for the better. Not only has the financial burden decreased, but Iqra also successfully applied to become an associate community facilitator at Human Appeal. After a fair recruitment process, she is now an associate community facilitator in Faisalabad, helping with our distributions in the community, and working to support and follow up with the people we help.
Iqra’s supporting her sister through physiotherapy training, and dreams of opening a clinic for vulnerable patients. Still a very young woman herself, she still struggles with the expenses of supporting her three siblings.
She told us, “I still have a lot of challenges in supporting my siblings, but Human Appeal has supported me a lot and my financial situation is better now.”
Our admin fee allowed us to hire this dedicated, community-focused young woman, helping her to support her own community, while also supporting her younger siblings. The admin fee also allowed us to train Iqra on child protection and safeguarding, as well as practical training on implementing child protection on a community level, which ensures that all children we work with are protected at all times.
