Criteria for "Most Needy" Cancel Title is required

I apologize if this had been posted elsewhere already but the board search doesn't work on my phone. I was curious as to how kids are identified as being "most needy". Sometimes it's obvious but other times its not. Are there certain criteria they use or is it a judgement call from someone at the local SOA? l know there's more to it than income and family size but I've seen kids identified as most needy that seemed better off than those who weren't, and vice versa.

I called on a child from Delhi and found out that even though the family is new to the program and none have been sponsored yet, they enrolled all four children in the program. This leads me to believe that there's a special circumstance but she was not identified as being most needy.

There are five main things, I heard, that are taken into consideration, creating a scale of 0-4. The ones I can remember: parents, housing, (water, I think). Monthly income, in and of itself, is not factored in because it can fluctuate so much.

I wonder if one criterion might be that a child shows great potential or has some special skills that can't develop without sponsorship?

This is good information. It would be great if someone from CI could confirm how it's done and let us know what the five criteria are.

I wish I had asked this question earlier. I won't be looking for a new child for a few years now, and in my recent searches, i didn't ignore the "most needy" flag, but I didn't give it much weight, either. It seemed arbitrary. It's probably a better indicator, though, than income and family size, which were my main criteria.

http://community.liftone.org/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=121091andw=255061andd=901367

here is a link to the post by the admin about the most needy criteria.?

thanks

To determine which children are considered the “neediest” there is a point system to score the children. The criteria used is:

electricity + water + sanitary + sleep accommodation + parents

Income is not a factor because you can't compare it from country to country, and it fluctuates so much - daily in some cases.

thanks deb

Thanks for this information, Debbie. That makes so much sense once you describe it. Are you able to share how CI ranks the different situations under each criteria? I don't need to know point systems or formulas; it would be enlightening, though, to see which conditions are seen as worse than others for each of these. For some it may be obvious (open field for sanitary), but for others. like water, it's not so much.

Regarding the situation I mentioned where (I was told) four kids in the family was enrolled at the same time, even though Delhi is new for CI and the rule is generally one per family, what kinds of things might cause that, other than perhaps me being misinformed? (The child in this case is my Sifa.)

The SOA each use their own factors to determine the most needy. The "formula" listed in the previous post if how CI decides who is the "Most Needy" for the our website.

With regard to Sifa, she has 2 sibs enrolled and the 4th (who is 11) is not enrolled, so there are 3 in her family.

Delhi was a bit different in their enrollment approach. They enrolled by "ward" and tried to reach all the families in the ward befire moving onto the next. To maximize loss of work for the parents and multiple trips to the SOA office, the staff enrolled multiples in each home 2-3 the first time around.

Hope this helps!