| You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers. Take a look at the list below for info on the ins and outs of your donation. Still cant find what you’re looking for? Give us a call! |
| You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers. Take a look at the list below for info on the ins and outs of your donation. Still cant find what you’re looking for? Give us a call! |
Your support goes a long way in providing much needed education, health care and economic assistance to children and their families in developing countries. Justo’s story is one such example.
We will honour your generous contribution by ensuring it is spent effectively to create meaningful change. Free the Children works both at home and abroad to empower and help change the lives of children.
For international projects, the solutions highlighted in our materials and the suggested donation amounts are based on the average costs in the countries in which we operate and within the variety of needs within Free The Children's program areas (education, clean water, health care, alternative income) and your gift supports the overall mission of the organization in these four program areas.
In cases where donations exceed what is needed or local conditions prevent program implementation, Free The Children will redirect funds to similar activities to help people in need. If additional funding is required because of specific project requirements or challenging local conditions, Free The Children may provide additional funding to complete the project to meet our commitment to our beneficiaries. In all cases, we commit that your donation will be used to achieve the highest impact possible.
Free The Children has a unique development model called "Adopt a Village." Through the Adopt a Village development program, there are four pillars of development (i) education; (ii) health care; (iii) water and sanitation and (iv) alternative income projects to help ensure financial sustainability.
Putting the four pillars together creates a holistic development model that helps to ensure children and community members are able to break the cycle of poverty. When a donation is made to build a school, depending on the needs on the ground, it is used to help build a school, support education projects and/or towards the overall development and long term sustainability of the village. As a valued donor to the work of Free The Children, you will be assigned to a school community which you have helped to support and be provided with updates from the field.
Moreover, because of the mission of Free the Children as an organization of children helping children through education, the holistic approach of the Adopt a Village Model also enables the education of children in North American about these important global development issues. This important aspect of Free the Children programming ensures long term systemic change.
Free The Children is the world's largest network of children helping children through education, with more than one million young people involved in our innovative programs in 45 countries. The organization was founded in 1995 by international child rights activist Craig Kielburger.
“Free The Children’s primary goals are to free children from poverty and exploitation, and free young people from the idea that they are powerless to bring about positive social change.”
We believe that youth leadership is the key to achieving a generation of committed and socially active young people. In North America, Free The Children motivates and educates thousands of young people each year through its youth leadership and global education programs.
Internationally, Free The Children has:
Unlike any other organization, Free The Children is funded and driven by the energy and passion of youth.
As a “by youth, for youth” organization, we believe that young people have the power to address inequalities affecting their peers in developing countries. And with an average age of only 24, our enthusiastic team is the true embodiment of that belief.
We have also set a new standard for administration rates among children’s charities, with 91 cents of every dollar donated going directly to our development projects.
Free The Children is also unique in our holistic development model, Adopt a Village. This program covers each aspect of community development by providing access to education, alternative income sources, health care, and water and sanitation to marginalized regions worldwide. Through this multi-faceted approach, children and their families are truly empowered to break out of poverty.
Yes. Free The Children is a registered charity in Canada and the United States.
On average, 60% of Free The Children’s funding comes from direct contributions and in-kind support generated by young people. From bake sales, to walk-a-thons, garage sales and coin drives, it is the innovative and passionate fundraising of young people that has always been the fuel for our organization. Whether it be donating funds to support education projects or securing in-kind support of medical supplies to be shipped to communities in need, young people make up the foundation of Free the Children support. Meanwhile, about 40% of our funding comes from generous adult donors (individuals, foundations, corporations and government) who are often working hard to match the donations of their young counterparts.
Free The Children implements the Adopt a Village Program in six rural and marginalized areas in the following countries: Kenya, China, India, Sierra Leone, Ecuador and Sri Lanka. Adopt a Village is a unique, holistic and sustainable approach to community development that is both assets- and rights-based. The program is designed to meet the basic needs of developing communities and eliminate the obstacles preventing children from accessing education.
Adopt a Village is made up of four components crucial to lifting communities from poverty: education, alternative income, health care, and water and sanitation.
a) Education: We believe that education provides the highest return of any social investment in the developing world. Our education programs build schools, libraries and teacher accommodations; support teacher training; and provide school furniture, uniforms and basic school supplies.
b) Alternative Income: Our alternative income programs target marginalized women, providing them with productive resources such as milking/breeding animals, vocational training, micro-credit programs, honey production, beading or business and financial literacy workshops.
c) Health Care: We recognize the link between providing basic health care and building strong communities. Our health care projects include community gardens, basic medical supplies for health clinics, health care and awareness workshops and sports equipment to promote physical fitness.
d) Water and Sanitation: Many diseases common to developing countries are transmitted through contaminated water and inadequate sanitation systems. In response, Free The Children is providing communities with clean water sources, building latrines in schools and improving practices around basic sanitation.
In addition to our Adopt a Village countries Free The Children has built schools in the past in the following countries:
We work in rural communities with high incidences of poverty and child labour. At Free The Children, we believe that creating lasting change is not a one-person job; entire communities need to come together as one to make a difference. As a result, we’re currently focusing our Adopt a Village programming in countries where we’ve developed long-standing partnerships with communities, local leaders and governments. These countries include Kenya, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, India, Sierra Leone and China.
Because we work hand-in-hand with communities to implement our projects, the commitment of all community members is essential to making Adopt a Village work. Our goal is not only to ensure the sustainability of our programs, but to empower communities with the skills and resources needed to change their lives.
Our commitment to each region is only met when community members have acquired these skills and are capable of sustaining change by themselves. As each community is unique and faces its own set of challenges, the length of this process can vary.
In every program country, Free The Children has a team of seasoned, mostly local professionals and knowledgeable partners that implement our programs. Regular monitoring and evaluations of the programs are completed by our senior staff and international office. We are committed to hiring locally to ensure the effectiveness of our programs and to build capacity within the regions where we work. The size of the Free The Children country teams varies to reflect the specific needs of each region.
Each donation is distributed in a strategic and timely manner so that funds reach those who need it the most as soon as possible. Donors can choose to match their donations to both the country and community they choose and target their donation to a program area. Alternately, donors can choose to let the Free The Children team match their funds to the areas of greatest need at the time of their donation. If you donated:
To a specific country and area of sustainability (education, water/sanitation, health care, alternative income): We will target your donation within your chosen country and area of sustainability to the initiatives that need it most based on our priorities and long-term plans for each community.
To a specific area of sustainability (education, water/sanitation, health care, alternative income): We will target your donation within your chosen area to the program country (Kenya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, China, India or Ecuador) that needs it most based on our priorities and long-term plans for each community.
To a specific program country: We will target your donation within your chosen country to the area of sustainability (education, water/sanitation, health care, alternative income) that needs it most based on our priorities and long-term plans for each community.
Through the gift catalogue: The needs shown in the catalog reflect Free The Children projects at the time the catalog was written, and each item and amount is representative of the gift category in which it appears. Donations will be used to provide assistance where it is needed most within that area of sustainability (education, health care, water/sanitation, alternative income).
At Free The Children, we recognize that it takes a community of donors to help a community abroad, which is why we pool funds to implement many of our larger projects, such as wells, schools and health clinics. This approach also makes our programs more sustainable, as we do not rely on just one person to fund an entire project.
When you donate to the alternative income component of our Adopt a Village program, your gift is targeted to our alternative income programs in a specific community, helping community members to gain financial stability.
Our alternative income programs go beyond the provision of animals, and include financial literacy and business skills training for women and their families, ensuring long-term solutions to economic challenges. Goats, animals and other productive resources can be provided through micro-loan/grants programs or through women’s group activities, depending on the country. This is all part of ensuring our programs are uniquely designed to have the greatest impact for each community we work with.
Free The Children prides itself on having one of the lowest administration rates of any charity. On average, 91 cents of each dollar donated goes to support projects and only 9 cents are used for administration costs.
We believe that full transparency is key to the success of all our operations and, as such, an outside accounting firm conducts an annual audit of Free The Children. What’s more, an all-volunteer experienced Board of Directors oversees the work of Free The Children, sets policies and procedures, and monitors our budget and expenses to ensure funds are spent wisely.
Click below to view our independent audit report:
All the prices provided in this website represent average costs in all the countries where Free The Children works. These prices are meant to be used as a general guide for our donors who may choose to contribute to one or more components of the Adopt A Village model. In order to maintain our very low administrative rate we do not provide country specific cost breakdowns.
Some of the average costs for our projects are:| Average Price | Project | |
| $50 | Can help purchase goats or chickens for milking/breeding | |
| $75 | Can help support hand washing stations | |
| $100 | Can purchase textbooks | |
| $250 | Can help build latrines at a school | |
| $500 | Can help provide a nutritious lunch program at a school | |
| $1000 | Can help support basic literacy and business training workshops for adults | |
| $5000 | Can help build a clean water project | |
| $8500 | Can build a school |
As Free The Children is a registered charitable organization in 7 countries, including Canada and the United States, any donation of $10 or greater is tax deductible.
For more information contact:
Victor Li
Chief Financial Director
E-mail: accounting@freethechildren.com
Phone: 1.416.925.5894 ext. 102
One of our core values at Free The Children is “honouring every stakeholder” and, among other ways, we adhere to that value by being fully transparent in all our operations. If you choose to donate to our international projects, you’ll receive an update twice a year on the progress of the community you support.
These reports include:
Meeting the community and volunteering to help make the project a reality is an extremely rewarding experience both for the donor and community, and we welcome you to visit communities in many of the countries where we work.
To facilitate your visit, Free The Children works in coordination with our partner organization, Me to We Trips, which plans all trips to our development sites. During the visit, you’ll have a chance to connect with the community you’ve donated toward and even volunteer to implement the projects you’re helping to fund.
We strongly encourage you to visit our projects and experience for yourself the impact that your donation has on the lives of children and families in need. However, due to the remote locations we work in, not all program countries can be visited at the moment. The program countries currently available to visit are Kenya, Ecuador, China and India.
To learn more about Me to We Trips, visit www.metowe.com/trips.
One time donations: By engaging a community of donors to support a community overseas, we ensure all aspects of the Adopt a Village program are implemented until the projects become self-sustaining. There is no obligation on your part to continue supporting a project.
Ongoing donations: Supporting a community on an ongoing basis by becoming a monthly/annual donor or taking on a fundraising campaign makes an incredible difference in many lives. We’re able to match you with a community you can support over the long-term, receive updates about twice a year and maybe even visit yourself. We encourage you to call or e-mail us to find out more about all the support, resources and benefits we offer to ongoing donors.
If you are an adult donor, please contact:
Free The Children
(416) 925-5894
development@freethechildren.com
If you are a youth donor or are otherwise involved in youth support, please contact us at:
Free The Children
(416) 925-5894
youth@freethechildren.com
At Free The Children, we value your support and respect your privacy. We do not sell, rent, or trade the names, postal addresses or e-mail addresses of our donors.
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