“A poor person without relatives should not be equated to a person with relatives. Orphans should be placed on the priority list of eligible people for loans,” Yousef said.

Prince Faisal bin Salman is the chairman of Insaan’s executive committee.

The charity committee, which started with sponsoring 100 orphans, has now 11 branches with 40,000 orphans receiving its sponsorship, Al-Watan daily reported yesterday.

The committee has launched a portal called the Insaan portal to link all its branches in Riyadh province to ensure administrative efficiency.

He said Insaan’s sponsorship services include giving financial assistance to single mothers.

A mother is given three cards to cover the various expenses of a sponsored child. One of the cards enables the mother to claim SR50 for each member of her family from Al-Rajhi Bank. The second card provides SR150 for food for each member and the third enables the mother to claim SR50 to buy clothes for each member. The total annual cost of these cards is estimated at SR120 million.

Insaan also allocates SR1 million to rent out apartments to families monthly. This is apart from SR100,000 for each family for repairs in addition to paying out more than SR1 million for furnishing and buying electrical devices for houses every month.

The annual expenditure on orphans’ education reached SR10 million. Its educational programs included enrolling orphans in good private or public schools, sending school dropouts to professional institutes and girls to health institutes. Student orphans are also supplied with school kits every academic year.

The committee spent SR600 million over the past 10 years for the welfare of orphans, Yousef said.

He said the number of philanthropists showing interest in sponsoring orphans is growing by the year. “While most individuals prefer sponsoring child orphans, the committee continues its relations with grown up orphans and provides assistance with regard to job placements and married life,” he added.

He said the committee arranged many orphan marriages under the Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd Project, which has volunteered to arrange 1,000 marriages involving orphans.

He said the Prince Salman Project for Insaan orphans strives to provide jobs, enable training ending with employment, offer university education and send orphans abroad on scholarship.

“It has sent 55 orphans to reputable universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and some other countries with the cooperation of the Ministry of Higher Education. We hope to continue sending a similar number of students to foreign universities annually,” he said.

Another project of the committee is the launching of a village with 12 villas to provide a homely atmosphere for orphans.

Yousef said Insan planned to hold elections for the new board of directors over April and May. There are 42 nominations for 13 seats in the four-year board, he said.