ActionAid sponsorship schemes: helping children and women or a colonial relic? | Letters

2026-01-28 - 18:20

Readers respond to the news that the development charity is rethinking such schemes as they carry racialised, paternalistic undertones I welcome the news that ActionAid is moving away from child sponsorship schemes, following other global NGOs in recent years (ActionAid to rethink child sponsorship as part of plan to ‘decolonise’ its work, 22 January). These schemes are colonial-like from a global analytical perspective, and local residents have long subverted and refuted their terms because they represent “poverty porn”. They also reify the community in ways that don’t work for those who sign up for them. Research in Tanzania showed that local staff were uneasy with the core premise. But pressures came from further up the chain, and it was often a pragmatic choice to retain a key source of unrestricted funding (for other fantastic advocacy work that project-based NGOs can’t always do). Continue reading...