For P1,350 every three months, you could buy yourself a nice shirt from a high-end clothing store in any one of the city’s numerous malls.

For P5,400 every year, you could buy yourself two pairs of brand name jeans or a second-hand mobile phone.

All of these are perfectly legitimate ways with which you could spend your money. But the people working at World Vision, a child-focused Christian relief and development organization, believe that money could be put to a much better use.

By donating either P450 a month, P1,350 quarterly, or P5,400 annually, your money would be helping send an impoverished child to go to school and maybe even change a life for the better.

World Vision began in 1950 with a simple act of kindness by a young Christian minister named Bob Pierce who was working in China and Korea. Pierce, who was then associated with the Youth for Christ organization, had a chance to work with the impoverished people and was particularly affected by a young Chinese girl named White Jade.

White Jade came from a poor Chinese family who had beaten and disowned her after she had converted to Christianity. Peierce gave her , enough for food, clothing and schooling. He promised to keep on sending money to support her. This act of compassion was the beginning of World Vision’s child sponsorship program.

It only took seven years before World Vision arrived on Philippine shores and since then, World Vision Philippines has helped more than 200,000 Filipinos earn elementary, high school, and college diplomas through their child sponsorship program.

To say that World Vision has a special place in its heart for children would be a severe understatement. From its very beginning, World Vision was inspired by a child and it continues to keep children as its central concern up to this day.

"World Vision is about children," says Daniel Hirsch, president and chief executive officer for World Vision International. "Throughout the world we are helping well over two million children everyday. We’re helping children in some of the most impoverished places in the world, whether it be in Africa, Asia, Latin America or Eastern Europe."

Hirsch is talking not only as the organization’s head but as one who has been able to see all of this with his own eyes. He first became part of World Vision in 1976 as manager of computer operations, and in 1996 became the group’s chief operating officer and vice president for development and relief operations. Hirsch also heads the Global Movement for Children, an international coalition of organizations, groups and individuals committed to the well-being of children.

His involvement in such organizations has made him keenly aware of how important a role children play in the world’s future, and as such has helped him focus World Vision’s attention on the plight of children especially in places such as Somalia, Cambodia and North Korea.

"I cannot allow for a world that would allow the needless suffering of children," he says. "If we adults ignore our children, we will find that we are not going to have hope, since our children will ignore us, too. Our mission is to help create a world in which no child suffers or dies for lack of food, clean water, shelter or protection from exploitation or war."

World Vision fulfills this mission through its child sponsorship program. Approximately half of the organization’s programs are funded through child sponsorship.

Individuals, families, churches, and other groups sponsor specific children or specific community projects in their own country or abroad, requiring them to send money each month to support the children or the projects they have picked themselves.

In 2005, World Vision’s work impacted the lives of 100 million people worldwide, all made possible by the millions of donors, supporters and volunteers that work with the organization to fulfill its goals.

Newscaster Karen Davila is now World Vision’s goodwill ambassador. She only has praise for the group’s pioneering and distinctive way of helping the impoverished children of the world.

"I started as a child sponsor. World Vision approached me and they told me how I can help a child, and it was so simple. When World Vision told me that I could change a child’s life with P450 a month, I was initially skeptical, but they explained the mechanics to me and assured me that my money would indeed help a child get an education," she narrates.

To ensure that the sponsored child does go to school, World Vision monitors the community and makes sure that the child does go to school. A sponsor is entitled to a picture file containing the picture of the child being sponsored along with a picture and the child’s report card.

"I was so happy because this was one way that I could use my money in a way that mattered," says Davila. "Every cent that I had given was quantified in the sense that there was one life and I saw the face of that one life. Everytime I see the child’s letters telling me ‘Dear Ate Karen, mababa po ang grade ko sa math ngayon. Pasensiya ka na, pero nakapasok po ako ngayong taon,’ I would just be amazed because there is this child who has no idea who I am, but I know that the money that I gave actually went to him."

This system, which keeps both donor and beneficiary accountable, is just one of the things that distinguishes World Vision from other initiatives to help children. As it has grown over the years, the group has also expanded its goals to include community development and advocacy for the poor.

World Vision Philippines, for instance, has not only helped poor Filipino children get an education, but has established 187 anti-tuberculosis task forces in five provinces, helped more than 27,000 children escape from child labor, gave 22,500 families in Aurora and Quezon relief and rehabilitation projects, and has engaged 17,000 families in 10 provinces in a P90-million micro-financing project.

"One thing that sets us apart from government programs is thatWorld Vision takes accountability very seriously," explains Hirsch. "We track every child and we have child protection policies that make sure that no child will be lost or abused or for anything inappropriate to happen. Many times governments do not have the capacity to do that. We also keep our costs very low, and we don’t get involved with politics."

In the end, Hirsch says, it is these children that we either ignore or help out that will judge us in the future and determine if we had done anything meaningful with our own lives.

"Governments keep on talking, talking, and we never see any action at the village level," he says. "While World Vision is working, the government is still talking. The children see that and it’s time to stop talking and start working."