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Child Sponsor South Sudan
When South Sudan voted to become independent from Sudan it appeared to herald the beginning of a bright new future. The largely Christian south, always overshadowed, overlooked and often exploited by its much larger and aggressive "neighbour" Sudan, looked set to be a welcome addition to the international community of democratic states. Then, after independence, the country fell into a brutal civil war that raged between hostile factions vying for power against a backdrop of food insecurity, a collapsing economy and worldwide appeals to raise funds to prevent thousands of children and their families dying. Today Sudan, with a population of 10.91 million (2022), is in 192nd place out of 193 countries and territories in 2021 when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country with a life expectancy of 54.98 years (2021).
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Amongst the many challenges the fledgling country faces is that, according to U.N. estimates, only 55% per cent of the population have access to drinking water and less than one in five South Sudanese know how to read and write, a situation complicated by the fact that about two thirds of South Sudan's children are not officially registered, making it difficult for them to gain access to education (around 1.3 million children of primary school age are out of school in the country.) And that's just those who live long enough as South Sudan has an infant mortality rate of 102 out of every 1000, making it one of the world's highest, with one in nine children dying before reaching the age of five.
Child sponsor programs in South Sudan work with orphaned and abandoned children, providing food supplies to those who are severely malnourished, developing water projects, education projects and providing seeds and tools as well as aiding those in refugee camps. Projects also assist the wider family as many children have to engage in labour activities to support their impoverished families and this is normally in subsistence farming. You can help when you sponsor a child in South Sudan.
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