Chosen® is a new invitation to child sponsorship where a child chooses his/her sponsor. You (the sponsor) can select a photo from your photo library and submit it online on our Chosen® webpage.
Your photo and name will then be sent to an Area Development Programme (ADP) where World Vision works and a child from that ADP will make their choice. Once the choice is made, you will receive a photo of the child and a personal letter from the child sharing why you were chosen.
Finally, as with all our sponsorship relationships, your sponsored child and you can build a friendship through care gifts, letters and visits to the ADP through World Vision-organised trips.
The monthly contribution for child sponsorship through Chosen® is $50.
Chosen® is not a "different" child sponsorship product or model - it is a new invitation to sponsorship. The only thing changing is the way sponsor-and-child relationship begins.
In the traditional sponsorship invitation, sponsors are asked to choose a child to sponsor. In the new Chosen® invitation, sponsors send their photo to an Area Development Programme where children choose them to be their sponsors. It is a new invitation that is powerful as it flips the choosing dynamic on its head and gives children more ownership in the choice of who their sponsor will be. However, World Vision's effective community-empowering sponsorship development model remains unchanged.
Chosen® invites you to put the power of choice in the hands of the child, flipping the traditional selection dynamics. It sets the tone from the start and is a tangible manifestation that children can (and should) have choices in life. It emphasises that they have the power to choose what their life can become. Additionally, it gives children a greater contribution in the process as they have more ownership in the decision-making process.
It is a simple switch in thinking that recognises the dignity, value and honour of everyone involved - acknowledging that children living in extreme poverty have the power to change their own lives...and your lives too.
One critical component of child empowerment is giving children space to develop their own opinions and act on their thoughts and preferences. Through Chosen®, children have the opportunity to select their own sponsor, instead of being informed of who has selected them.
This is only one of the many things that World Vision is doing to empower children as part of our child-focused, community-empowering approach.
