The Mission
Plainly: we help children grow up with water, school and safety.
No hedging, no boilerplate. Here is what the program does, how it started, and who does the work.
What we do
A simple model, run patiently.
Make Child Poverty History is an ongoing program, not a single event. WSI agencies around the world sponsor thousands of children through World Vision, and WSI matches that commitment: for every child sponsored by one of our franchisees, agencies, suppliers or customers, WSI sponsors another child.
Alongside sponsorship, the network runs fundraisers throughout the year — including global golf tournaments timed across time zones so the sun never sets on WSI’s fundraising that day — and challenges like the 2015 Kili Climb 4 Kids.
We do not run field operations ourselves, and we never pretend to. World Vision does that, with local staff and local leadership, over years rather than weeks. Our job is to bring people, energy and funding to it.
How it started
A boardroom decision that got personal.
The program began when WSI leadership decided the network should do more than talk about giving back. Child poverty was the focus: specific, solvable, and something a global network could genuinely move.
Rather than build a charity from scratch, WSI chose a delivery partner with decades of field experience — World Vision — so that every dollar landed inside proven work instead of new overhead.
Founded in 2005
Why World Vision
Because they stay.
World Vision is one of the largest relief and development organizations in the world, working in nearly 100 countries. Their community development model is led by the people who live there and runs for 10 to 15 years — water, health, education, child protection and livelihoods together — until the community carries it alone.
That is a harder story to tell than a single dramatic intervention. It is also the one that works.
Support World Vision →VisionFund
Small loans that help parents provide for their children.
We also fund and take part in VisionFund, World Vision’s microfinance network. VisionFund offers small loans, savings and insurance to families living in poverty, many of them women running tiny businesses in rural communities that banks do not reach.
A small loan can buy seed, livestock or stock for a market stall. As a family’s income grows, children eat better, stay in school and stay safe. Sponsorship helps a child today. VisionFund helps parents keep providing for them over the long run.
Learn about VisionFund →Our philosophy
One child, one village at a time.
Child poverty is too large to solve in one gesture and far too specific to solve in the abstract. So we work the way change actually happens: one child sponsored, one water point built, one community that no longer needs help. Repeat that enough times, with enough people, and it stops being symbolic.
Founder’s note
Why I climbed, and what I saw.
I have spent my career helping businesses grow. Somewhere along the way it became obvious that the same network we had built to do that — thousands of people in dozens of countries — could be pointed at something far more important.
Kilimanjaro was the way to make it real. You cannot raise money for something you have not felt, and a mountain has a way of making a commitment physical. Standing on Uhuru Peak with our flag, cold and short of breath, I understood what the network could do when it decided to.
Rwanda was the other half of it. Meeting families at a new water point, watching children walk to school instead of to a river, I stopped thinking of this as fundraising. It is infrastructure for a childhood.
The program is still going, and it needs people. If you are part of WSI, this is yours. If you are not, you are welcome anyway.
Dan Monaghan
Founder, Make Child Poverty History · Founder, WSI
This program runs on people who decide to join in.
If you are part of the WSI network — or you simply want to help — there is a place for you here.
Sponsored a child? Let us know each one — WSI will sponsor another child to match it.