The one thing she refuses to cut from her budget

It’s 1989.

Caroline Santos is 10 years old. Her family has just immigrated to Canada from Portugal. She sees a World Vision commercial on TV and desperately wants her family to sponsor a child… but they can’t. Her own parents are struggling to make ends meet, but her heart feels drawn to help.

It’s 2001.

Caroline has a blossoming career in the air travel industry. She takes a job at a new airline… and then 9/11 happens. Air travel grinds to a halt.

“I guess travel is not part of my future,” Caroline thinks. She pivots careers.

It’s 2008.

Caroline has just moved from Toronto to a much smaller Ontario town. She walks into a new church, and finds a World Vision display in the lobby. A row of little faces looks up from a table—children waiting to be sponsored.

She knows what she wants to do. She doesn’t hesitate.

It’s 2013.

The sales company Caroline works for has relocated. She’s looking for a new job. She sees a posting for a position at World Vision Canada, uploads her resume, and gives it to God.

A leap of faith

World Vision Canada is staffed by some of the best people you’ll meet. Caroline Santos is one of my favourites. She’s energetic and passionate, a persistent connector of people. Also, an enthusiastic pickle-baller.

When she landed at World Vision in 2013, she remembers thinking, “I don't even know what this job is, but this is World Vision—a charity I had already been supporting and loving.”

The job was to find new ways of reaching Canadians with the invitation to sponsor a child.

“What haven't we done? What can we do?” her team was asking. Through their hard work, sponsorship opportunities popped up in movie theatres and airports, grocery stores and music festivals. “If we could rent a space, we put a booth in it,” she remembers. “That's basically what we did.”

She’s worn several hats at World Vision since that first role, but all have focused on bringing sponsored children and Canadians together. In 2024, she was asked to manage the Chosen program.

What is World Vision’s Chosen program?

Chosen offers a unique approach to child sponsorship: rather than a Canadian sponsor choosing a child to support, the child chooses a sponsor for themself.

The traditional script is flipped, and the effect is somewhat magical.

How does Chosen work?

A church commits to partnering with a specific community where World Vision works. People from the church sign up. The community then holds a special event—a “Choosing Party”— for children who don’t yet have sponsors. One by one, the children walk up to a wall of smiling photos and choose the person who will be their new sponsor.

“Many of these kids don't have an opportunity to choose what they're having for dinner, or choose what to wear, or choose whether dinner is even available,” Caroline explains. “ Chosen empowers children to shift their mindset into what life could be like with choice.”

If it’s positive for the kids, it’s transformational for the sponsors, who learn about their new sponsored child on “Reveal Sunday.”

“That moment where the donor opens their envelope and finds out who chose them, they're now part of that story,” Caroline says. “It's not, ‘I'm coming to a table, I'm choosing this child, I don't know if this child is real.’

“It becomes, ‘Oh, wait, I was chosen .’”

That fact—of being chosen by a child—touches a tender spot in many sponsors’ hearts.

Part of a church? Learn how you can bring Chosen to your congregation . Not part of a church? You can still sponsor a child !

Chosen is an amazing experience, both for sponsors in Canada and for children around the world. But one of Caroline’s most touching memories is with a child who did not officially “choose” her.

Meeting Lillian: a small hand in hers

Before she ever set foot in Mathare Valley, Kenya, Caroline knew it as one of the toughest places World Vision Canada works. The impoverished urban slum is cramped and rough, a risky place for children.

When Caroline’s former sponsored child’s community graduated, Caroline chose to sponsor Lillian in Mathare Valley. She hoped that one day, through a Chosen trip, she might get to meet her.

In November 2025, she did. Caroline travelled to Kenya to help facilitate a Choosing Party. Early in the trip, she had a chance to visit Lillian and her family at home.

“Their house, with five kids, is probably half the size of my living room, maybe even less,” Caroline recalls.

At first, Lillian was shy. Her brothers and sisters were not. They climbed all over their guest. Lillian’s mom walked Caroline to her produce stand. “She showed me her stand and how World Vision helped her set it up, which was really great. It was wonderful to be able to see that.”

After the visit wrapped, Caroline said her goodbyes and walked on through the settlement with the World Vision staff.

“About 20 minutes later, I felt a little hand pick mine up,” she remembers. “Lillian had just wandered back and found me and was holding my hand. She walked around with me the entire time.”

Lillian attended the Choosing Party later that week as a guest, where she was able to join the kids’ programs included in the event.

“We danced, we ate together, and she held my hand the entire day,” Caroline says.

Lillian didn’t choose Caroline from a wall of photos. But on that visit, Caroline felt chosen just the same.

Transformation witnessed firsthand

Caroline, who once believed travel was dropping out of her life, has now been to South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Guatemala through her roles at World Vision.

“I never planned any of this. But looking back, I can see God's hand in every step—even the ones that looked like dead ends.”

Over the years, some of the communities where Caroline has sponsored children have graduated, the ultimate goal of sponsorship. Other children left the program when their families moved on, sometimes to safer places.

She entered the organization full of hope and belief in the mission. Like most donors, she started with a big-picture understanding. Years of seeing the details up close, complications included, haven’t shaken her belief in the work. They’ve deepened it.

“I completely understand how transformative our child sponsorship model is,” she says. “The impact that $49 has is much greater than what that cost actually is.”

Today, she sponsors four children: Lillian in Kenya, Sofia in Guatemala, Innocent in Uganda and Ivanna in Peru.

A choice she makes every month

One thing Caroline is clear on: she takes her commitment as a sponsor seriously, and it’s not without sacrifice.

“This year has been really tough for my family, and I've had to make some significant changes and choices, and look at what I could and could not afford,” Caroline says. “And the one thing that I refused to cut was my sponsored children.”

“It is a choice,” she continues. “It’s like, ‘What are you going to give up to be able to have this impact?’ Every month I look at it and say, ‘Okay, I'm not able to do this, or go to a movie, or buy new pickleball shoes. And I see that amount come out of my bank account. But then I get my progress report, and it’s like, ‘I'm okay. I don't need pickleball shoes.’

“Even if I wasn't able to do this job anymore, if I left World Vision and started working somewhere else,” she says, “I won’t stop sponsoring these children.”

Sponsorship is a monthly commitment that reaches beyond one child. It supports programs that benefit the whole community. If you’ve been thinking about sponsoring a child, this is a good day to start!

Hear from other World Vision Canada staff:

• Videographer Jerome Harder: “Why I chose to sponsor”
• Coordinator Elizebeth Jacob: Why she can’t stop talking about child sponsorship