Taipei, Dec. 9 (CNA) The 200,000th child has been financially assisted by Taiwanese people under the World Vision Taiwan (WVT) Christian charity since it launched its child sponsorship program in 1991, the group said Friday.

Through the WVT child sponsorship program, Taiwanese sponsors have assisted the children from Taiwan and 41 other countries and areas since the organization became instrumental in arranging for Taiwanese sponsorship of a boy from a poor family in India, which sowed the seeds for the sponsorship program.

The 200,000th child, sponsored by a military officer surnamed Wang who lives in Hsinchu, is a 4-year-old boy who lives in Cambodia, said WVT Executive Director Hank Du.

Wang, who has two children of his own, contributes NT$700 (US$23.33) per month to help sponsor the boy, named Pheak Leng, who comes from a farming family in Cambodia's Siem Reap Province. Due to several bad harvests, his parents cannot afford to send him to school and he eats only breakfast and dinner each day, according to Du.

For his part, Wang said he feels blessed to be able to sponsor a child in Cambodia.

"The sponsorship is a significant deed that has a good educational impact on my children. I wish my family to grow up healthy, as well as that little life far away," Wang said.

Pheak Leng is the first child to be included in the WVT sponsorship program in Cambodia since the charity initiated it in Siem Reap Province's Chi Kreng County in October, according to the group.

WVT was officially incorporated into the World Vision international partnership as a field office in 1964, mainly focusing on caring for orphans and lepers and providing medical care in remote regions of Taiwan.

After 20 years of receiving donations from abroad, WVT began in 1985 to enlist Taiwanese sponsors to support Taiwan's impoverished children.

It began raising funds locally in 1990 by launching its first "30- Hour Famine" campaign. The drive, centered on emergency relief programs both in Taiwan and overseas, not only serves to educate the general public about hunger and ways that people can help, but also acts as a conduit through which relief funds can be channelled.

Some of the funds raised have been used to "light up" areas around the world where children do not have artificial light to read at night. So far, according to WVT, 1,500 LED lamps have been shipped to Haiti, with a further 4,000 distributed around the African countries of Mali, Malawi and Sierra Leone, along with 500 in Cambodia. (By Lung Jui-yun and Deborah Kuo)