Changing Lives: An Analysis of Child Sponsorship Data

Child sponsorship has been a foundation of Plan International’s work since our beginnings. We currently engage with 1.4 million sponsored children in 481 countries through sponsorship activities, communications and programmes. Back in 2006 we began to record the annual surveys that are conducted with all sponsored children. Since then, we have generated a unique and vast dataset from more than 12 million surveys conducted among 2.7 million sponsored children. This report presents a condensed version of the full study findings by RMIT University.4 It also offers our responses to those findings, in which we see particular relevance for sponsorship operations, the programmes and influencing work that we do in communities, and marketing and fundraising activities.