Compassion committed to integrity

Charity Navigator, one of the world's leading financial accountability organizations, awarded Compassion its highest ranking—4 stars—for the fifth year in a row. Only 1 percent of the more than 5,000 charities they rate have achieved this accomplishment in financial integrity.

It is easy to get bogged down in the statistics of poverty. Each year an estimated 33 million children are born without any hope for a future. Thirty percent of children worldwide suffer from malnutrition. Nineteen percent have no access to clean water. Seventeen percent will never go to school. And the most sobering statictic of all—30,000 children under the age of 15 die each day.^**

These statistics are overwhelming, but at Compassion statistics don't matter as much as children do. In order to win this battle against poverty, Compassion strive for excellence in all areas of their ministry. In the past year, more than 135,000 children were registered in Compassion's Child Sponsorship Program. Here are some other milestones accomplished this year:

• Worldwide sponsorship grew by 13 percent, bringing the year-end total of child sponsors to 689,086.
  
  
• Total revenues were up by more than 18 percent over the previous year, enabling Compassion to serve more children than ever before.
  
  
• Compassion's Leadership Development Program helped 1,017 promising young leaders with their college education and offered these young people Christian leadership training.
  
  
• The Child Survival Program (CSP) rescued, nurtured and discipled more than 4,000 of the world's youngest, most vulnerable children and their caregivers. In the next year, Compassion plans to open 106 more CSP projects, bringing the total number to 172.

Read about the story of Emmanuel, Ghana's first sponsored child.


**Statistics from UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 2006