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To Save a Child
1 For every morning that you wake up and eat breakfast, there are 840 million people be-
ginning their daily struggle with chronic, persistent hunger. For every morning that you have the
privilege of going to class, 250 million children head off to work where many will make less than
$1 a day. And for every day that this vicious cycle continues, there are 24,000 fewer people in our
world.
2 Millions of children living in developing countries cannot depend on their parents to sup-
port them. Rather, they live each day with little more than the hope that someone more fortunate
than them might take compassion on them. By sponsoring a child for two years through an organ-
ization called Compassion International, I have seen the difference that $28 a month can make in
a child’s life.
5 According to a brochure sent to me by Compassion International, the average family in-
come in Central America is $50 per month. Unfortunately, the cost of food in Central America is
the same as in the United States. Because so few families can afford the cost of groceries, half of
all children living in Central America are malnourished. Twenty percent of them are so severely
malnourished that improved diet alone will not cure them.
6 Of course the problem isn’t limited to Central America. The Hunger Project Web site
claims that worldwide “about 24,000 people die from hunger or hunger–related causes every day,
and three–fourths of them are children under the age of five.” To put this in perspective, 24,000
deaths is equivalent to more than half the students on this campus dying every day. To think of it
another way, it means that more children lose their lives to hunger every week than the number of
Americans that lose their lives to cancer in an entire year.
420 PERSUASIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
7 According to the Hunger Project, “the best way to reduce hunger is through education be-
cause the educated are best able to break out of the cycle of poverty that causes hunger.” Once
again, let’s look at Central America. Most of the children in Central America are not required to go
to school. And if they do go, it is rare that they ever make it past the 6th grade because even public
education is too expensive. This cycle is never-ending. If children do not become educated, they
will never be able to make enough money to break out of the cycle of poverty. However, this vi-
cious cycle can be broken with the help of Compassion International.
10 When you sponsor a child, it is usually for several years until the child is either 18 or has
completed their schooling. You can sponsor a child for just $28 a month and even have the option
of paying several months to a year in advance. Compassion International understands that there
may be a time when you can’t support your child. This is why there is no obligation to continue
your sponsorship. Compassion International claims that they will immediately look for a new
sponsor for your child and he or she will have continued support without interruption.
11 I have been sponsoring a little boy named Jose Francisco for two years. He lives in
Ecuador with a family of seven and is ten years old. I get about three letters a year from Jose, and
it’s clear from those letters that he has had new opportunities to learn and grow—both physically
and mentally. Being Jose’s sponsor has been incredibly rewarding and is something that every
one of us has the opportunity to do.
12 At this point, most of you are probably thinking, “How much of my money actually goes to
helping my child?” Any true skeptic would feel the same way. From my class survey, more than 50
percent of you thought that less than half of your money would go directly to your child. And I, too,
was reluctant to sponsor a child at first for the same reason.
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14 Another reassuring factor for me was that when I went to Compassion International’s
Web site, I discovered that they are audited both internally on a periodical basis and externally
every year. Both of these audits help to ensure that funds are properly received, tracked, and
managed for each child. From this evidence it’s clear that Compassion International is an up-
standing organization and is deserving of its rank from Smart Money magazine as “one of the top
ten charitable organizations in the entire country.”
15 So today I’d like to encourage you to sponsor a child of your own through Compassion
International. When you consider that $28 a month amounts to less than one dollar a day, is this
really too much to give to provide a child with an education, food, and health care that will help
break the cycle of poverty? If $28 a month, every month, is still too much, I encourage you to
422 PERSUASIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
To Save a Child
Commentary
A persuasive speech seeking immediate action, “To Save a Child” is an excellent example of how to use
Monroe’s motivated sequence. Here is a synopsis of the speech.
Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience to help children worldwide by contributing to Compassion
International.
Central Idea: Contributing to an organization such as Compassion International can help break the
cycle of poverty that affects millions of children.
Method of Organization: Monroe’s motivated sequence
Introduction: The introduction consists of paragraphs 1–3. In paragraph 1, the speaker accomplishes
the attention step of Monroe’s motivated sequence by relating the plight of millions of impover-
ished children around the world to the daily activities of her audience. Paragraph 2 introduces
Body: In the first main point of the body, the speaker demonstrates the need to help impoverished
children around the world (paragraphs 4–7). Drawing on sources such as the World Bank and
the Hunger Project, she uses statistics and testimony to argue that poverty, hunger, and poor
education create a need for charitable organizations such as Compassion International. The
speaker does a fine job translating statistics into terms that can be readily understood by her
classmates when she states that the 24,000 hunger–related deaths that occur in the world every
day are equivalent to half the students on her campus dying every day. She also draws a com-
parison between the number of daily hunger–related deaths and the number of Americans who
die of cancer every year.
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