This week at Group of Four we introduced each other to our sponsor children. Between us we have children in Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia and Nepal. Each family had begun a poster showing information about their child and his/her country. After we had shared these facts we broke up into groups to graph some of the statistics about these four countries and make comparisons with four wealthier countries.

We chose Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy because of the connections our families have with those countries. Graphs were made to display population density, life expectancy, percentage of population living below the poverty line, GDP per capita and infant mortality rates. The last two catergories were graphed together to show the inverse relationship of GDP to infant mortality.

Coming back together with our graphs each group explained what they had discovered while discussing and drawing their graphs and we talked about the impact these facts had on the countries’ need for aid. Even though we were looking at the big picture the children began to see how very privileged they are to live in a country where few die young, backyards are common, and the economy is healthy.