Recent Posts

6 reasons to tune into Comrades

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Michael Chitwood, national director, Team World Vision in Child Sponsorship

Runners during the 2010 Comrades ultra-marathon near the 60-kilometer mark. ©2010 Andrea Peer/World Vision

Fifty-six viciously long miles of uphill and downhill, racing a 12-hour ticking clock that could result in either one of the most rewarding or disappointing experiences of your life. Complete the track in time and cross the finish line — but one second too late, and your name won’t even be recorded. That’s the challenge seven Team World Vision runners are up against this weekend at the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. After running the race last year, we’re returning to take up the ultimate cause once again — 56 miles for 56 sponsored children; one sponsored child for every mile of the race. That may be the only reason we need to be at Comrades this year. But here’s...

Why care about the G8 Summit?

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Robert Zachritz in Advocacy

Jennifer holds her baby, Gladys, after washing her with water from the gravity-fed water system installed by World Vision in her village. ©2011 Suzy Sainovski/World Vision

Every year since 1976, the heads of state of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia (which joined the group in 1997) have been meeting to discuss the global economy, security, and, increasingly, development issues. These leaders, known as the G8 (or Group of Eight), will hold their annual summit in Deauville, France, today and tomorrow. It can be difficult to understand why citizens of these countries should care about high-level policy meetings like this one. But these meetings set the course for critical priority decisions that affect what programs and issues are addressed, and which ones are set aside. These meetings result in financial commitments made by individual countries....

Observations from Missouri’s tornado zone

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Phyllis Freeman in Disaster Relief

Outside Irving Elementary School in Joplin, Missouri, the devastation following the May 22 tornado is hard to comprehend. ©2011 Phyllis Freeman/World Vision

Editor’s note: Joplin, Missouri, is a small town in the U.S. Heartland. Its official population is 50,150. But now, it is tragically smaller in every sense, after the May 22 tornado that left 122 dead, 750 injured, and more than a quarter of the town destroyed. Phyllis Freeman, our domestic emergency response director, is on the ground in Joplin. I went looking for a school and found Irving Elementary School. It was mangled, the bricks blown apart. You can only think about the children who lived through this, seeing the skies turn black, hearing the roar of 200-mph winds, and watching the tornado chew things up, literally. Then they emerged to find their home gone, not knowing what’s happened to...

World Vision responds to tornadoes in central U.S.

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Mindy Mizell in Disaster Relief

Scattered debris surrounds a damaged home in a neighborhood hard hit by a devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri May 23, 2011. Tornadoes tore through parts of the U.S. Midwest on Sunday, killing at least 30 people in Joplin, claiming another life in Minneapolis and causing extensive property damage in the region. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Mike Stone

Update, May 25, 3:44 pm: World Vision is also continuing its tornado response in Joplin, Missouri where our national domestic disaster director just completed an initial assessment of the neighborhoods impacted in Sunday’s deadly tornado. “The damage in Joplin is every bit as devastating as what we’ve been responding to......

South Sudan: Can independence bring a brighter future?

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Joyce Mulama, World Vision South Sudan in Advocacy

Southern Sudan preliminary results announcement celebration in Juba, South Sudan on January 30, 2011. ©2011 Abraham Nhial/World Vision

Editor’s note: South Sudan, a region left devastated by decades of civil war, held a referendum last January in which voters decided to split from the northern part of the country and become an independent state. Preparations are in full swing for festivities to mark the upcoming independence of South Sudan. The mood is upbeat. On July 9, some 30 heads of state will travel to Juba, the acting capital city, to witness the birth of this new country. The history behind this event The region’s path to independence was preceded by 21 years of conflict between rebels in the South and the government based out of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city in the North. This created a massive humanitarian crisis,...