Hello! We are a group of students from Hwa Chong Institution who have come together to raise awareness on global poverty and ultimately implement a child sponsorship programme in our school as part of the Hungry to Help Challenge. Our starting approach was to get students to care more about poverty, and offer them possible avenues to help in a tangible manner.

Sent home to die by the first doctors she encountered, Hamida Khatun is only alive today thanks to the World Vision-funded heart surgery she received as a sponsored child, the gift of life allowing her to have a daughter of her own.

Being an intern, I did not expect to get the opportunity to go on an overseas work trip. So when my boss offered me the chance to go to Bo Kluea, Thailand with her I was thrilled. Even though I bore the expenses of the trip myself, I was thrilled not just because I love travelling, but also because I would get to learn more about the work World Vision does.

The Youth Summit on Redefining Volunteerism was a truly eye opening event and having attended it as a volunteer, I have gotten a much closer glimpse as to how the seminar has made an impact on the students who had all come together, eager to rediscover ways in which they can make a difference.

I went to Mongolia, quite glad to escape the haze and all ready to embrace the endless  expanse of blue skies. Some trippers  who had visited before noted that there was much development on the way to Uvurkhangai. There were fewer potholes and now a packed KFC in the middle of the dessert surrounded by camels, horses and sheep dog. It couldn’t have been more exotic.

It was refreshing to have met like-minded individuals who wanted to find out firsthand how World Vision’s sponsorship programme partners with communities in need to benefit the young and at-risk. We started as a group of strangers from different backgrounds embarking on a five-day trip to a foreign place, but through the 5 days, we bonded by experiencing the tangible, positive and powerful impact that the perseverance and support for this sponsorship programme have yielded.

Typhoon Koppu made landfall in the province of Aurora early Sunday. It is expected to remain over mainland Luzon for up to three days and exit Philippine area of responsibility by Saturday, October 24.

World Vision communicator Joy Maluyo in Isabela shares, “I saw large tracks of rice fields inundated by floods. If rains continue for days the crops will rot and farmers will bear big losses if they fail to salvage their harvest.”

Over nearly 5 years fighting in Syria has reportedly killed 220,000 – 76,000 last year alone. More than 4 million people have fled the country and 7.6 million are displaced in Syria. More than half are children.