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Making sense of US sponsorship

Living in the US is so much more expensive than the other countries where Children International operate, so that sponsoring a child in the US will require multiple sponsors, whereas one sponsor per child from outside. In other words, our sponsor dollar would have much greater impact on a child living in poverty outside of the USA.

Gross domestic product per capita is the purchasing power parity value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given year, divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same year. Here are the GDP per capita (IMF estimates equivalent to USD for 2021) in CI countries:

1. USA = 69,380

2. Dominican Republic = 20,940

3. Mexico = 20,820

4. Colombia = 15,920

5. Ecuador = 11,530

6. Philippines = 8,900

7. Guatemala = 8,890

8. India = 7,310

9. Honduras = 5,770

10. Zambia = 3,410

So, you can buy more things with one dollar (or the purchasing power of the dollar is higher) in Zambia than you can in any other country listed above.

The average GDP per capita for CI countries (outside USA) is 103490/9 = 11,499, meaning even distribution of dollar amount by the excess from 5 countries going towards 4 higher economy countries. Thus, the number of sponsors required per US child should be 69380/11499 = 6. However, it seems that having up to 4 sponsors (mentioned on CI website) could be due to Arkansas economy rather than the US national average.

This also could be why US children on the waiting list usually stay far longer to find up to 4 sponsors. And, other than required to write once a year plus sharing it with all sponsors, I wonder whether the same (CP rule or for that matter EG/DP) apply to them when comes to individual sponsor letters/gifts follow-up but only sharing with that sponsor in the group.

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