Stats

* Every 15 SECONDS, another child becomes an AIDS orphan in Africa1

* Every DAY 5,760 more children become orphans

* Every YEAR 2,102,400 more children become orphans (in Africa alone)

* 143,000,000 Orphans in the world today spend an average of 10 years in an orphanage or foster home

* 43.4 million orphans live in sub-Saharan Africa, 87.6 million orphans live in Asia, and 12.4 million orphans live in Latin America and the Caribbean.

* 1.5 million children live in public care in Central and Eastern Europe alone.

* At any given point there are over 500,000 children in the U.S. Foster Care system.

* In some countries, children are abandoned at alarming rates, due to poverty, restrictive population control policies, disabilities or perceived disabilities, and cultural traditions that value boys more than girls.

* Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, but...

* Every YEAR 14,050,000 children still grow up as orphans and AGE OUT of the system

* Every DAY 38,493 children AGE OUT

* Every 2.2 SECONDS, another orphan child AGES OUT with no family to belong to and no place to call home.

* In Ukraine and Russia 10% -15% of children who age out of an orphanage commit suicide before age 18. 60% of the girls are lured into prostitution. 70% of the boys become hardened criminals. Many of these children accept job offers that ultimately result in their being sold as slaves. Millions of girls are sex slaves today, simply because they were unfortunate enough to grow up as orphans.

**If only 7% of the 2 billion Christians in the world would show hope to a single orphan, looking after the child in their distress, there would effectively be no more orphans. We can each do something.


Note: I have collected these statistics from a couple different places on the web including:
www.hfgf.org
www.showhope.org