Stories

Meet Samira, a student currently attending college in Char Borobila. In spite of living 3.5 kilometres from the college, Samira perseveres with the support of her loving family, choosing to walk the whole way or pay 30 Taka a day for local transport.

Families in Ethiopia struggle to grow enough to achieve food security, so their children suffer. Here’s how Child Sponsorship helped Sara’s family overcome poverty and become self-sustaining.

Sarah teaches Grade 3 literacy in Bunashimolo, a small community located in Bukiende, Uganda. In addition, Sarah is a wife and mom with three kids of her own under the age of 10: Josephat, Betina, and little Blessing.

Cham comes from a family that didn’t know the value of formal education. Instead of attending school, they worked hard at their farming and did their best to survive. But Cham is determined that her family will be different

How a Young Girl is Transforming her Community's Future

Does child sponsorship really work?

Across Canada, June is graduation month. From big cities to small farming towns, teens are moving those tassels from right to left, grinning ear-to-ear as they stride off the stage of their childhoods and into the boundless world of adulthood. Moms are crying. Dads are cheering. Siblings have mixed feelings. But everyone is proud!

Ritah was shy.

And just like that, they’re off.

In the past, we in Canada may have been tempted to take education for granted. Of course our children will go to school when they turn five or six and stay in school until they graduate at the vibrant age of 18, ready to take on the world—or, at least, university. But after nearly two years of rolling COVID-19 lockdowns, school closures, and various versions of online-only or hybrid learning, we’re no longer so quick to assume anything when it comes to our children’s education. “From its early days, the pandemic has been a terrible study in inequality, so it seems inescapable that the world’s poorer countries would bear the heaviest costs. But kids also disappeared from classrooms in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.”1

For students in rural Cambodia, pandemic lockdowns have closed schools and have made learning a disjointed and difficult process. Schools have been mostly closed since the onset of the pandemic, jarred by reopening and closing again. The substandard education experience for children in the community weighed on the Prasat Krohom Meanchey village chief, Mr. Chhoeun Ngoun. “While COVID-19 was spreading through the community, 19 schools were temporarily closed and left children out of in-person school,” he explains. But Chhoeun had a plan to help kids continue learning together outside of school.

For anyone, a chance to learn and grow can make you feel valuable. And 12-year-old Rorn Hann didn’t always feel valued.

Someone’s been paying attention in class! Seven-year-old Phither has been attending FH’s High-5 program aimed at filling the lives of children with blessings, fun activities, shared Bible stories, and memorizing Bible verses

These days, health and hygiene lessons also include how to protect herself, her family, and her community from COVID-19

Over the last three years, Food for the Hungry (FH) Canada has spearheaded an innovative and collaborative online platform called endingpovertytogether.org. In this virtual arena, over 40 Canadian organizations who participate in poverty alleviation contribute dynamic educational resources for Canadians in search of healthy ways to address poverty right here in our own country.

From pat-a-cake under a beautiful mango tree to a rousing game of volleyball, the way kids in Ethiopia play is not all that different from what you might expect on a Canadian playground.

Sometimes you need just the right expression to ‘hit the nail on the head’. Check out these local idioms from FH-partnered communities — ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’! While they don’t come from your ‘neck of the woods’, you might just find they are your ‘cup of tea’.