PROVIDES was founded in May 2003 by two University of Michigan students, Idy Usoro and Tara Thomas. Their vision was to live in a world where no one was hungry and everyone had the opportunity to live healthy lives. Idy and Tara were aware that many of their peers shared their vision but did not have the knowledge or financial resources to address this issue. Thus PROVIDES was founded to help college students sponsor children in third world countries.

PROVIDES is here to help students on campus sponsor children in developing countries as a means to alleviate the problem of world hunger and to improve the children’s communities. Because we know that many college students do not have the financial resources to sponsor a child on their own, we have set up ways to help make it possible – and have fun at the same time!

We strive to build a community of friendship between UM students with each of our 20 children sponsored locally by a “family”, which consists of a group of students or friends or even another University of Michigan organization brought together by a common vision to bring hope to each child we sponsor. Families get together to raise $300 per kid per year through many of our campus fundraisers, write letters to our kids, and educate each other about the world our children live in. Another cornerstone of PROVIDES is education as we aim to provide a means of seeing the world through the eyes of the children we sponsor.

All the money that is raised by our families go to Plan USA, who disperse it to our kids. A unique feature about the program is that the money does not only go towards our kids, but their communities as a whole in order to provide them with better nutrition, healthcare, and education. In essence, the money we raise not only helps the kids but the people around them as well. Our kids reside in Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

Plan USA is a national non-profit chapter of the Plan International Global Partnership, which was founded in 1937 by a British journalist named John Langdon-Davies and refugee worker Eric Muggeridge to provide food, accommodation, and education to children affected by the Spanish Civil War. However, in the 1950s, Plan developed globally to reach out to children in need of critical help in other countries throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Presently, Plan works in 49 developing countries and is one of the oldest and largest organizations of their kind and have developed grassroots, self-help programs to assist more than 10 million children and their families in poorer communities around the world.

The key program areas Plan is involved in include Growing Up Health, Learning, Habitat, Livelihood, and Building Relationships.