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Gifts of Compassion

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Education and Training

Stable employment and economic independence begin with equipping youth with a strong foundation of practical skills. This gift provides essential training in high-demand trades and professions, ensuring participants gain the expertise, confidence and practical abilities needed to pursue sustainable careers and support their families. Career-ready. Future-ready.  
When you give to the Education and Training Fund, you provide children and youth living in poverty with access to the education and resources they need to build futures free from poverty. Your gift supports learning resources, educational opportunities, spiritual education and discipleship. This includes computers, essential learning materials, tuition for vocational training, college or university, and opportunities to grow in faith, character and hope. Invest in education.   Open doors for children and youth around the world.
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Income Generation

Backyard farms are a sustainable way for families to fight hunger and generate income. Your gift empowers a family living in poverty by providing resources such as seeds, fertilizer, livestock, tools and training. These essentials help families establish backyard farms, grow nutritious food and create sustainable livelihoods.   Grow food. Generate income. Cultivate a brighter future.
When you give to the Income Generation Fund, you provide families living in poverty with a foundation on which to build their future. Your gift provides resources such as livestock, seeds, skills training and more, helping families overcome gaps in skills and resources. This is a gift that keeps giving by creating opportunities to earn sustainable incomes.   Provide lasting opportunities for the next generation. 
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Moms & Babies

Empowering moms is crucial in breaking the cycle of poverty. With this gift, you provide moms with the training and tools they need to develop new skills and enhance old ones—all so they can confidently secure jobs to help them provide for their families. When equipped and empowered, moms can make better decisions and choices for themselves and their families.

Many new moms and caregivers living in poverty lack the essential items needed to care for a newborn baby. With this gift, you provide basic supplies like blankets, soap, lotion and diapers to help ensure their baby is healthy and thriving. Hand-delivered by Compassion centre staff, these essentials also remind new caregivers that they are supported, loved and not alone.   Nurture babies and caregivers with a healthy start. 

The first year of a child’s life is critical. Without proper medical care and growth monitoring, irreversible damage can be done. With this gift, you help ensure that new parents living in poverty have access to essential medical services for their baby in those first critical 12 months.

Proper nutrition can be the difference between surviving and thriving for moms and babies living in extreme poverty. With this gift, you provide a mother and her baby with six months’ worth of supplemental food and nutrition, offering vital nourishment during a critical stage of life. This support helps moms and babies build a healthier future together.   Give better nutrition today to build a healthier tomorrow. 
The risks for expectant mothers living in poverty are significant. In low-resource settings, maternal mortality rates are tragically high. But with this gift, you provide an expectant mother with medical care, regular check-ups, nutritional support and educational resources, helping her experience a healthy pregnancy and safe delivery.   Support safe and healthy pregnancies. 
Each year, millions of children die before their first birthday from preventable causes. You can help change this reality through the Moms and Babies Fund. Your gift helps families access prenatal healthcare, regular check-ups, critical medical care, much-needed food supplies and newborn essentials. Through your generosity, moms and babies receive tangible care and life-saving support.   Give every mom and baby a chance to flourish.  
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Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Clean water is essential for life, yet 2.1 billion people worldwide lack reliable access. With your gift, children can have easy, consistent and safe access to clean water through boreholes, wells, rainwater harvesting systems or water filters. These solutions are tailored to each community’s unique needs for maximum impact.  
Did you know that two in five people worldwide lack access to safe sanitation facilities? Access to a clean washroom is critical to preventing the spread of deadly infectious diseases like cholera. Your gift helps fund the construction of safe washrooms, giving hundreds of children dignity and protection from disease.   Invest in safety, health and dignity. 
Hand washing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce the spread of disease. Regular hand washing is crucial for children to stay healthy. Your gift brings life-saving access to hand-washing facilities in communities where vulnerable children and their families need them most.  
Safe water, proper sanitation and hygiene are critical for health and well-being. Without access, children are vulnerable to disease. With this gift, you help ensure that children around the world have clean water to drink, safe washrooms, hand-washing stations and the education needed to practice good hygiene. Bring clean water, health, and hope around the world. 
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Health & Wellness

Diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as malaria, dengue and Zika, pose a potentially fatal threat to children and families in many parts of the world. The good news is that the risks these diseases pose can be reduced through preventive measures. Your gift helps protect vulnerable children through mosquito net distribution and preventive education.   Prevent disease. Protect lives. 
Children living in poverty often lack the nutritious food they need to grow and thrive, with many diets lacking essential proteins, fruits and vegetables. This challenge is especially severe in communities facing acute food insecurity. Your gift helps prevent malnutrition by providing supplemental protein-rich foods, vitamins and medical care to support healthy growth and development.   Nurture a child to grow and thrive. 
When you give to the Health and Wellness Fund, you provide children and their families with resources to stay healthy today and prevent future health complications. This fund covers essentials such as mosquito nets, dental kits, nutritional support and food for malnourished children, along with access to medical care and preventive health education for children, youth and families.   Open the door for good health and a world of possibility. 
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Safety & Stability

Poverty increases a child’s risk of abuse, trafficking, child marriage, child labour and other forms of exploitation. During times of crisis, these risks only increase. Your gift helps Compassion centres run child protection workshops for caregivers and community members, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to help safeguard children at home, at school and in their communities.  
 
Give knowledge that protects children.  
When you give to the Safety and Stability Fund, you provide families and communities with vital essentials such as housing support, emergency food packs and infrastructure improvements, often in the face of crises or environmental disasters. This fund also provides child protection training, supporting caregivers and communities as they work to create safer environments for vulnerable children.  
 
Help families flourish.

Where most needed

Give to our Where Most Needed Fund to enable our local church partners to respond to the most pressing needs of children and families living in poverty. Our church partners are uniquely positioned to know the needs of their communities and how to respond. Your gift provides the resources they need to do so.

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Start a fundraiser

Buying a gift isn’t the only way to make an impact. You can start a personalized fundraiser for any of the six categories of needs in the Gifts of Compassion gift guide. It’s never been easier to multiply your impact.

Gifts of Compassion+

Looking to make a larger investment in a future beyond poverty? Gifts of Compassion+ offers a curated collection of meaningful gift opportunities, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, each with a specific purpose to help children, families and communities thrive.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Gifts of Compassion work?

Every gift meets a real need identified by a local church partner who knows their community and the children and families they serve. These gifts provide the support, resources, skills and opportunities children and families need to overcome poverty and thrive now and into the future.

When you give a gift in honour of a loved one, you can download or send an e-card to let them know how their gift is helping children and families around the world.

Read more about Gifts of Compassion

What are the different types of gifts? Why do some gifts have thermometers and others do not?

Gifts of Compassion includes three types of gifts, each offering a different level of specificity: Cause Gifts, Focused Need Gifts and Specific Gifts.

Cause gifts help fund needs within a particular cause, with donations directed to the most pressing needs identified by our local church partners.

Focused Need gifts allow you to support a specific type of need within a particular cause. When you give a Focused Need gift, you are helping to meet some of the common needs of children and families we serve, as identified by our local church partners. Because these needs are so common, your gift could go to any one of our 9,000 local church partners around the world, depending on where the need exists. This helps ensure your gift is given to the right family at the right time.

Specific gifts raise funds for a specific need in a specific community, as identified by one or a small group of our local church partners. These gifts have a goal that shows how much it will cost to fund the entire project or program.

Once a specific gift is fully funded and the need is met in full, we won’t be raising funds for it anymore. Instead, we’ll add new gifts as our local church partners express the needs of their communities, or we’ll invite you to give towards other related gifts. That means not every gift you see in our gift guide will be available forever. So, if you see something you want to give towards, make sure to do it sooner rather than later!

Read more about the types of gifts

Where can I learn about Compassion’s financial integrity?

Financial integrity matters to us. We take your trust seriously and are committed to faithfully stewarding the funds you give.

No less than 80 per cent of funds raised will be used for program activities. No more than 20 per cent will be used for fundraising and administration.

Learn more about our finances

Who is Compassion?

As one of the world's leading child development organizations, Compassion’s mission is to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. Over the last 70 years, Compassion has advanced the fight against global poverty by partnering with local churches to lift children out of spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty.

Today, Compassion partners with over 9,000 churches in 29 countries to deliver our proven child development program to more than 2 million infants, children and youth. Around the world, children, families and entire communities are being equipped to overcome poverty and thrive now and into the future.

Learn more about Compassion