15% of the Democratic Republic of Congo's child population are orphans, 770,000 of them orphaned through AIDS alone. However, most have become orphans a result of the ongoing conflicts. We're talking about 5,000,000 orphaned children here ~ about the entire population of Scotland. Life expectancy for a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo is 59.19 years (2021) with a child mortality rate (under fives) of 84.8 deaths per 1,000 births. The country's education system, despite attempts to improve it over the last two decades, suffers from both poor coverage and poor quality. 3.5 million children of primary school age are not in school and national data indicates that only 67% of children who enter first grade will complete their final primary grade.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in 2021 estimate that 27.3 million people (out of DRC's overall population of 99.01 million (2022) need food aid and, of those, 7 million people face severe malnutrition. Child sponsor programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo range from providing practical help for displaced children in the east of the country with blankets and shelter to working with orphans and abandoned children, improving access to health and education as well as helping to develop the country's infrastructure. You can help when you sponsor a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo.