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Child Sponsorship
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Sponsorship Makes A Difference for Pinky
“I want to become a teacher,” says Pinky Banalal, a nine-year-old sponsored girl from Rajasthan, India. She studies in primary Standard 4 and her favourite subject is Hindi, which she enjoys reading.
She lives with her parents, one brother and a sister. Pinky’s father Banalal works in Jaipur city as a mason and comes home once every month to see the family. Her mother Santra Devi works as a labourer, sometimes on farms and sometimes on construction sites. Poverty has been their biggest challenge in the past, but Pinky's sponsorship is gradually turning their fortunes around.
Banalal and Santra own a plot of land on which they grow crops from seed provided by World Vision. “World Vision gave us 20 kilograms of channa seeds (lentils), from which I will get 3,000 rupees (US$30),” Santra said.
She explained that in the past they had not had a harvest for two or three years due to no rains. The bad harvest led to a shortage of seeds, and pushed up their price. At that time World Vision subsidised the price of seeds.
“Thanks to World Vision we now have two crops which will help us in meeting the food requirements for the family and also to buy items for the children,” says Santra. Santra has plans for her daughter but she also realises that she is fighting a difficult battle against the child marriage tradition prevalent in the community. Santra was married at a young age, but hopes for a different future for her daughter. “I want her to become a doctor or a good teacher. Banalal also hopes that Pinky will marry when she becomes older: One proposal has already come for Pinky but I want her to study well. I will do all I can to make her stay at school.”
Santra is happy that World Vision has helped in other ways, improving the roads and piping in clean drinking water. She remembers children playing in pot holes of water full of floies and mosqutios. She says: “Children would get malaria and fever very often. Now there are no problems like that as World Vision has built concrete roads and good drainage.”
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