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Please note that our Donor Care team will contact you once the donation has been received to confirm your preferred country for the sponsored orphan.
All children deserve the best start in life: nurturing homes and safe places to play and learn, nutritional food, and quality medical and emotional care.
However, many of these rights are out of reach for the 1 in 5 children who live in poverty worldwide. For these precious children, life is incredibly challenging as they contend with the threats of illiteracy, disease, child labour, lifelong poverty and even death.
The loss of one or both parents can be a traumatic experience for any child, regardless of the circumstances. However, in countries where war, famine, or poverty is an everyday occurrence, millions of children are left orphaned and struggle to survive.
50% of all people living in extreme poverty are children (UNICEF). Deprived of much-needed educational support, health care and critical age-appropriate safe places to play and grow, these children are incredibly vulnerable and face a bleak future.
Since 1986, supporting orphans and children has played an integral part in Islamic Relief’s mission to alleviate poverty around the world. We believe that every child deserves a positive start in life and the hope for a bright future.
Sponsor an orphan today and help transform the lives of children around the world.
First launched in 1986, as part of the Muslim Yateem and Widows Fund, what is now the Orphan Sponsorship Programme began by supporting children in Afghanistan. Over the years, the programme has grown and expanded to 85,500 orphans across 27 countries, including Gaza, Sudan, Albania, Kenya and Pakistan.
In October 1997, the programme moved closer to what it is today. Under the title, Orphan Welfare Programme, it helped provide support for children’s basic needs such as food, clothing, as well as long-term support in education, healthcare, and income generation for their guardians.
In 1999, one-to-one sponsorship began in the West Bank and Gaza, where we provided orphaned children and their families with food, housing, clothes, health and education, while sponsored children also received educational support.
In 2003, Islamic Relief was one of the few international aid agencies to deliver aid during the war in Iraq.
Our programme is well-established, and we have a wealth of knowledge and experience around supporting orphans and their families in the best way possible.
We ensure the following in our Orphan Sponsorship Programme, to maintain transparency, fairness and high-standards, so that orphans and their families are provided with the highest level of care.
To our knowledge, Islamic Relief is perhaps one of the only charities to offer a true one-to-one orphan sponsorship programme, where the donation continuously goes to the same orphan. This allows for the life of the same orphan to be continuously transformed long term, which means that the change isn’t short term but they are able to truly rise above their circumstances, gain the opportunities they deserve, and build a better life for themselves and their families.
It is a common practice of some charities to direct orphan sponsorship funds to support groups of orphans as a whole through communal programming, rather than an actual one-to-one programme. This allows for lower prices that overall can help supplement the needs of orphans and provide uplifting programming, but do not offer the opportunity for transformative change for individuals.
Helping to care for orphans and vulnerable children is a duty for Muslims. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) emphasised the status of orphans, and the importance of fulfilling their needs.
We are inspired by the status Islam place on vulnerable orphans, it stands as the perfect means for carrying out the Prophetic guidance.
They ask you as to what they should spend. Say: “Whatever good you spend should be for parents, kinsmen, orphans, the needy and the wayfarer; and whatever good you do, Allah is all-aware of it.”
Here’s a list of frequently asked questions that you can use for further information on our Orphan Sponsorship Programme.
In the case of death, sponsorship may be transferred to a sibling if they are of sponsorship age.
In each family, one child in every two can be sponsored, providing of course that sponsors can be found. This can be modified by the field office upon approval of the Child Welfare Department if there is a particular need for more children within a family to be supported.
The Orphans General Fund is a unique resource that works to support caregiving families of orphans to break the chains of poverty and allows Islamic Relief the flexibility to send emergency aid or develop innovative programming that addresses the unique needs of children within their communities.
We use your orphan charity to ensure child-friendly safe spaces, empower communities, and develop long-term solutions to poverty and critical issues like child labour and child marriage.
Through this fund, we support children across the globe in a variety of ways, including:
This fund also enables us to respond to the urgent medical requirements of orphans and their caregiving families – covering the costs of emergency care, travel to hospitals, prescriptions and medical equipment such as wheelchairs, hearing aids and eyewear. Orphans affected by chronic and long-term illnesses like asthma and diabetes are also supported through this fund.
When the call for relief comes, your contributions to this fund mean that we will be ready to serve immediately, efficiently and effectively.