Saudi Gazette report
JEDDAH — About 7,400 Saudi families were sponsoring 15,838 orphaned children in 2018, the Arabic daily Al-Watan reported on Saturday quoting statistics released by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development.
A ministry report said a total of 1,632 families sponsored 1,937 orphans in Riyadh while in Makkah there were 2,577 foster families who sponsored 2,887 orphans and in Madinah 661 families and 783 sponsored orphans.
According to the report, there were 272 foster families in Qassim sponsoring 327 orphans and 725 families sponsoring 849 orphans in the Eastern Province.
In order to sponsor an orphan boy or girl, the family should be Saudi with a stable economic background and the mother in the family should not be above 50 years of age.
All family members should be free of contagious diseases and they should treat the orphan the same way they treat their own children.