Like mothers everywhere, Fatimata mint Doulel worries about her children. That will not change on Sunday, when families around the world honour their mothers.

Fatimata lives with her husband and children, and more than 20 other relatives, in a two-room concrete-block house in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, one of the world's poorest countries. Their home in the squatter's camp on the edge of the Sahara Desert has no running water, no toilets and no electricity.

But those are luxuries - along with celebrations like Mother's Day - when you don't have enough food. Feeding her children is what Fatimata worries about most.

Especially Maimouna. Nine-year-old Maimouna is dangerously thin. Obviously malnourished, her arms and legs are rake-thin and she teeters when she walks. The cheekbones of her heart-shaped face jut out sharply. Although Maimouna has kept her school marks up, at recess she can only sit and watch while the other children rhythmically jump and clap in a game that resembles skipping without the rope.

"I know it's because we can't afford good fat fish," Fatimata says of her daughter's health problems. "I can only afford the poorest quality in the market. I just don't know what to do."

On her husband's meagre income of $50 a month, Fatimata has only enough money to buy a sack of rice for them to eat and oil to cook it in. There is nothing left over to buy meat, vegetables or medicine to treat Maimouna and the other children when they get sick, as they often do.

Fatimata takes in laundry to help earn more money to feed her children. She makes about $3 a day, enough to buy a baguette for the children's breakfast. But the long thin loaves are mostly crust. They offer little nutrition and there is never enough to go around.

Fatimata is not alone in her fear for her children's well-being. Malnutrition is common in many African countries, including Mauritania. Weak and malnourished, children there can't fight off such common diseases as malaria, diarrhea and respiratory infections; some 22,000 Mauritanian children die every year of preventable diseases.

"I pray above all that Maimouna will be healthy . . . and I pray that she will get a good education," Fatimata says.

As Mother's Day approaches, are you wondering what to get your mother this year? Flowers again? A toaster? Maybe a dinner out?

Or you can make your mother proud by giving her a gift only she can truly appreciate - the gift that gives a child a better chance at life. You can give that gift by sponsoring a child through World Vision. As a child sponsor through World Vision, you can help change the life of a child like Maimouna by providing the basics that every child deserves: food, clean drinking water, health care and the chance to go to school.

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian relief and development organization active in more than 90 countries around the world, providing help to more than 85 million people each year.