It’s that time of year again—the time when stores fill up with rows of backpacks, roads fill up with yellow buses, and classrooms fill up with bright, smiling faces.
There’s just something exciting about the start of a new school year. Sadly, many children around the world don’t get to experience the excitement of going back to school.
In countless impoverished communities, students are forced to drop out of school in order to help support their families. Without a complete education, they will struggle to overcome the cycle of poverty they were born into.
This could have been the future for Gloria, a 15-year-old girl from Lutisi, Uganda, if it weren’t for the generosity and compassion of her sponsor.
In Gloria’s village, most families live in extreme poverty, and the parents struggle to afford the fees, uniforms, and supplies necessary to send their children to school.
They do the best they can, working multiple jobs so their children can attend school for at least part of the year. Despite these sacrifices, many can only afford the cheapest schools in the village, where teachers are often neglectful or absent.
After Gloria’s father became disabled in an accident, her parents thought they would never be able to give her the education she deserves. Her mother works hard to provide for their family but earns less than $1 a day—barely enough to live on, much less send Gloria to school.
But God provided through the kindness of a sponsor living on the other side of the world.
When Gloria was just six years old, she learned that a sponsor had committed to be the one for her so she could go to school. She could barely contain her excitement on her first day, and neither could her parents as they watched their daughter walking toward the school—and the future—they could never afford on their own.
Gloria worked to make the most of her education from that very first day. Over the past nine years, she has developed a passion for learning and a love for the English language.
She recently told her sponsor that she thanks God every day for their support and encouragement to do her best in school.
Gloria hopes to use her education to become a teacher someday and share the gift of learning with others. She is already using her unique talents and opportunities by sharing what she learns in her classes with her younger siblings and the other children of Lutisi.
Even though she has very little herself, Gloria is doing what she can to help spread the hope that education brings. Will you do your part?
Will you be the one to give a needy child the joy of a first day of school and the lifelong blessings that a quality education can bring?
