World+Vision

=Brief History:= World Vision was founded in the early 1950's when one man tried to help one child in one country with only $5.The first child sponsorship began in 1953, caring mainly for children in orphanages.In the late 1950's, the sponsorship program grew to care for over 13200 children.During the mid 1960's, sponsorship of thousands of orphans continued to grow globally.In the early 1970's, sponsorship expanded to 54000 children in 25 countries and the relief effort continued to grow. World Vision continued up with the good work, but in the 2000's, many children were lost due to HIV, famines, tsunami, hurricanes and more disasters. The Asian tsunami in the mid 2000's, really affected a lot of the sponsored children and 3700 local World Vision staff members worked together with life-saving aid. In 2010, the loss of more sponsored children was caused by the Haiti earthquake and the Japan earthquake. World Vision focused on improving sponsorship community development model, with the ultimate goal of self-sufficiency. Today, World Vision helps more than 4million children in nearly 100 countries.

=Purpose, Goals and Mission:= World Vision's mission is to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by working with the poor to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God. They want to demonstrate Gods unconditional love for all people and to be an encouraging christian organisation that engages people to eliminate poverty and its causes on the children.



=Their Work:= World Vision works to provide worldwide community development in assistance to over 100 million people worldwide. They provide to over 90 countries, helping people who don't have the resources to care for themselves. They help by making long term development programs, advocacy and providing the opportunity of education. The aim of their work is to make many communities and families self-reliant and able to have access to the things that they need but don't have.

=Case Study:= An example of World Visions work was the Peace Building in Lebanon. From 1975 to 1990, There was a argument between Lebanon and the Capital City, Beirut. After that war, the land was divided into Muslim and Christian sectors. Since then, for many, many years, Lebanon's Muslim and Christian population have been struggling with conflict and fighting. World Vision has been slowly helping to decrease the conflict by bringing children together from the Christian side and the Muslim side for peace-building activities and they have even started a camp for the Muslims and the Christians which is open to more than 100 children from Lebanon. Andrew Ghafari, the World Vision Lebanon leader said that on the first day that the camp opened, many of the parents of the children at the camp came to check on their child because they were worried that it was a 'mixed' camp of both the Muslims and Christians. Andrew responded to that saying,

" //It's time for the parents to stop worrying about the differences and instead, start trusting that those differences will give their children more confidence and strength. In many ways, its the parents that need peace-building activities. But we believe and trust that our students will be agents of change in our parents lives."//

=Contact Information:= World Vision Australia: Phone: 13 32 40 Fax: 03 9287 2427 Email: feedback@worldvision.com.au Postal Address: GPO Box 399, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001 Australia Donate: http://www.worldvision.com.au/donate.aspx

By Alice Wynn-Hatton