I am Professor of Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. In my position, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics teacher education, curriculum development, qualitative research and contemporary issues in education. My research focus during my twenty years as an education faculty member has been primarily in the field of mathematics teacher education, where Bourdieu’s social field theory and theories of critical, culturally responsive education feature prominently in my work. That said, my research and teaching interests have always revolved around a deep interest in issues of social justice and culturally responsive pedagogy. Even though I am not an experienced educator or researcher in areas of global citizenship, justice education, or international development, I have been active in international development and solidarity work for many years through education and curriculum projects in Grenada, The Gambia and Malawi, including volunteer work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Volunteer International Christian Service (VICS) and Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation (SCIC). My passion for justice, coupled with that for learning, researching, and writing, helps contextualize my aims in this grant proposal; that is, to deepen my understanding and critique of child sponsorship and to propose/promote alternative actions—actions that are grounded in conceptualizations of justice, solidarity, ethical relationships, and international development education for the general public and K-16 educational institutions.

Engaging the public in critical and justice-oriented global actions: Moving beyond child sponsorship

In a recent review and critique, I claimed that child sponsorship, in its noted absence of a critical examination of the root causes of poverty and global injustices, is not “better than nothing.” The charity-focused action of sponsoring a child in the global south raises questions centering on power, poverty, responsibility, complicity, and justice. As a follow-up to that critique, this research responds to the question: what critical and justice-oriented actions should the average citizen be doing?

Five forms of knowledge mobilization from the research project:

1. WEBSITE
Your Global Action Tackle Box: Moving Beyond Child Sponsorship
http://www.beyondchildsponsorship.ca
In this educational tackle box, I provide materials and resources designed to ‘tackle’ child sponsorship (CS) through education and by proposing alternative critical and justice-oriented actions aimed at ‘moving beyond CS.’ The contents of this tackle box website are drawn from research interviews conducted with academic researchers (in the areas of international development studies, sociology, education, anthropology, and global citizenship education), directors and coordinators of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and independent consultants and global fund raising managers. Although the website recently went ‘live,’ the invitation at the end of this message invites you to a 30-minute Zoom event on June 1 to officially launch the website.

2. ARTICLE
Please Continue To Not Sponsor This Child
https://newint.org/features/2022/04/04/feature-please-continue-not-sponsor-child
Published in the May-June 2022 issue of New Internationalist, this feature article marks the 40th anniversary of ‘Please do not sponsor this child,’ an article published in New Internationalist in 1982. In ‘Please continue to not sponsor this child,’ I revitalize that 40-year-old story— with new information from my research study that demonstrates how, over these 4 decades, the more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same. That is, the same set of misguided motivations for sponsors, the same lack of public education around issues of global poverty and inequity and the same level of denial of the role played by the Global North in (re)producing problematic historical patterns of thinking and relationships.

3. PODCAST
HRI Let’s Talk Research: Episode 3, Moving Beyond Child Sponsorship, with Dr. Kathy Nolan
https://www.humanitiesresearch.org/podcast/
In conversation with Dr. Charity Marsh (Director, Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at the University of Regina), I share information and reflections on the ‘Moving Beyond Child Sponsorship’ research project that was funded through an HRI Fellowship award. The podcast, which is 35 minutes in duration, challenges the listener to reflect on their own views about child sponsorship and the importance of engaging in alternative actions which are critical and justice-oriented.

4. ARTICLE (2020)
Better than nothing? /A review and critique of child sponsorship. 
https://doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v9i8.5574

5. INTERVIEW (2022)
Interview with Garth Materie, The Afternoon Edition, CBC
Radio Saskatchewan, June 2, 2022:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-103-the-afternoon-edition-sask/clip/15916615-u-r-prof-says-homework-opening-wallet-sponsor

6. ARTICLE (2022)
Why it’s time to end child sponsorship

https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-to-end-child-sponsorship-190407