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Every child deserves the best start in life: a happy home, a safe place to play and access to quality education, medical care and nutrition.
However, for the 1 in 5 children worldwide living in extreme poverty, many of these simple necessities and rights are out of reach. Instead, their life is incredibly challenging, with the risk of illiteracy, disease, child labour, lifelong poverty and even death.
Living in refugee camps, traumatized by war or simply unable to go to school in their local community due to crippling poverty, these children and orphan kids lack the means to keep safe at home, access critical education and medical and/or psychosocial care. Their futures look unsafe, uncertain and bleak.
“The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: ‘I and the one who looks after an orphan will be like this in Paradise,’ showing his middle and index fingers and separating them.” (Bukhari)
By donating, or sponsoring an orphan, you can help save an orphan and transform the lives of vulnerable children around the world.
Find out more about some of the ways your donations can help save and transform the lives of orphans and children around the world.
Through a one-to-one model of ongoing financial support, you can sponsor an orphan and care for their basic needs and wellbeing. Your monthly donation is life-saving, and helps to ensure that they have a safe home, food to eat, and access to health care and education.
For orphans who require urgent medical care, your monthly donation can cover the cost of emergency care, travel to hospitals, prescriptions and medical equipment such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, and eyewear. These funds also help orphans affected by chronic and long-term illnesses such as asthma and diabetes.
$10/month can help an orphan overcome any medical issues
Through our higher education scholarship fund, your monthly donation ensures that orphans in need are given the means to excel at school. Children are then able to attend university, gain a degree and then go onto a profession that enables them to break free from poverty.
$20/month can help provide an orphan with a university scholarship
Your monthly donation provides a lifeline to a large orphaned or vulnerable family and is allocated directly to the head of the family, who uses it to support their family’s needs and take ownership of their lives.
$250/month can help provide an orphan with a university scholarship
At Islamic Relief, we don’t believe in simply providing one-off care to support children and orphans in need. We instead invest in children’s long-term futures, supporting their families, carers and local communities to provide long-lasting safe sustainable solutions to poverty and inequality.
We work as a Muslim orphan charity to provide child-friendly safe spaces, empower communities and develop long-term solutions to poverty and critical issues such as human trafficking, child labour, and child marriage.
We support children across the globe in a variety of ways, including:
By providing nutritional services, health care, water solutions, education and family livelihood support, as well as striving to tackle critical issues including gender-based violence, child labour and climate change with affect local communities and in particular young girls, we’re not only transforming futures; we’re saving lives.
Save a life today, help orphans and needy children today.
Charity protects one from calamity, acts as shade on the Day of Judgement, and showers us in Allah’s (SWT) blessings. Your Zakat and Sadaqah Jariyah when you sponsor an orphan or provide medical and education support to needy children contains so much barakah.
The importance of giving charity to orphans in Islam is highlighted by Prophet Muhammad (SAW): “The best house among the Muslims is the house in which orphans are well-treated. The worst house is the one in which orphans are ill-treated.” [Bukhari]
Not only will your donation mean that orphans and their families benefit immediately but these programs will provide the tools to support themselves and pass on to the next generation, and the benefit will be ongoing. It is a Sadaqah Jariyah unlike any other!
This means the effect of your one donation will be multiplied to help orphan after orphan and family after family access food, medical care, clean water, and education in a dignified manner for years to come. It is the gift that keeps giving, and will continuously help you to earn rewards.
Here’s a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
Who does Islamic Relief support through our Orphan Sponsorship Program?
Islamic Relief defines an orphan as “A child in financial need and below the age of 18 without both parents or father (or whose father has abandoned them for a minimum of four years and his whereabouts are unknown); regardless of gender, religion, or race.
Please note: In the case that a child over the age of 18 undergoes financial assessment and is found to still need support, then we keep them in the orphan sponsorship program. They stay in the program to continue their education or receive ongoing medical support.
How much of my sponsorship money will reach the orphans?
The orphan receives 80% of the donated amount. The remaining amount is spending on administrative expenses that are used to manage the project. This entails the extensive field office work Islamic Relief conducts to ensure best practices are in place for your sponsored orphan. Our field officers also conduct psychosocial home visits on an annual basis.
Does the orphan receive sponsorship money every month?
The donations are transferred to your orphan’s guardian on a quarterly basis. This allows a consistent income not only for your sponsored orphan but for their entire household. Sponsorship funds are used for basic necessities such as food, shelter, education and health care needs.
How long will the sponsorship continue?
We encourage a minimum sponsorship time of one year but you may sponsor an orphan for as long as you wish until they have graduated from our sponsorship program. If you choose to cancel your sponsorship prior to one year, we request that you provide 3 months’ notice to ensure Islamic Relief is able to allocate a new sponsor to the orphan.
What information will I receive about the orphan I sponsor?
When you start your sponsorship, we will send you a photograph and further details of your orphan. In addition to the initial report, we send one annual report within 12-15 months from the date of sponsorship unless there’s a delay from the field office due to any political conflict, natural disaster, or any other crisis that requires immediate humanitarian aid. If you choose to cancel your sponsorship after 12 months and you haven’t received your annual report yet, you may contact us to receive your report.
Can I contact the orphan?
You can email any letters & photographs to your orphan via the following email address [email protected] We will review the letters to ensure they are suitable, and remove any contact details from the letters. We will then forward it to the field office, which will deliver it to your sponsored orphan.
Please note that a confirmation or a response can take months due to various factors including political conflict, orphan location (as most of our orphans live in remote areas), field office workload, natural disasters, and security, among other reasons.
What are the grounds for an orphan’s cancellation from the program?
Sponsorship may be cancelled if the orphan is over age, refuses to go to school, gets married, gets a significant increase in income, moves out of the region where Islamic Relief operates, or if the family or the child does not cooperate with our policies. In any of the cases above, we immediately redirect your donations towards a new child and provide the update.
We also experience unfortunate cases where the orphan passes away due to illness or sudden death. In that case, we look to see if the orphan has any siblings eligible for sponsorship to bring into the program and ensure you continue supporting the same family.
What happens if I wish to cancel my sponsorship?
If possible, we ask that you give us 3 months’ notice, so that we can find another donor. If this is not possible, the orphan will be supported by the Orphan General Fund until another sponsor is found.