Our Impact
The work, in the order it happened.
A climb that gave the network something to rally behind, a country that made it real, and the long, unglamorous work that keeps going.
Chapter One
Kili Climb 4 Kids
In June 2015 a team from the WSI network carried the flag to Uhuru Peak — 5,895 metres — for children who will never see the mountain.
WSI founder Dan Monaghan joined Team World Vision and celebrity ambassadors J.D. Scott, Cheryl Bernard and Rick Campanelli on World Vision's Kili Climb 4 Kids expedition, June 16–24, 2015. Nine days from the rainforest at Lemosho Glades, across the Shira Plateau and the Barranco Wall, to the summit at dawn. Before the climb the team visited Ketumbeine Village in northern Tanzania to see the work first-hand. The goal: raise $150,000 for World Vision's No Child for Sale campaign and its Women and Girls in Crisis Fund.
Chapter Two
On the ground
Numbers on a fundraising page become people the moment you meet them.
Walking into a community that has just been connected to clean water changes how you think about a donation. Children who used to spend hours carrying water are in classrooms. Mothers who used to nurse waterborne illness are running small businesses. The work is slow, local and led by the people who live there — and it holds.
Chapter Three
World Vision's work: wells and communities
One well changes a village's whole day — and then its whole decade.
World Vision does not parachute in and leave. A community water point is paired with sanitation, health, education and livelihood work, run with local leadership over years, until the community no longer needs the partnership. That long-horizon model is exactly why WSI chose them — and it reaches well beyond child sponsorship, as the section below shows.
Beyond sponsorship
World Vision is best known for sponsorship. Its work goes much further.
Child sponsorship is the front door. Behind it sits a wider set of programs that tackle the causes of poverty, not just the symptoms.
Clean water and sanitation
Wells, water points, toilets and hygiene training so children stay healthy and in school.
Health and nutrition
Care for mothers and newborns, immunization and support for children at risk of malnutrition.
Education
Helping children learn to read, stay in school and gain skills for work.
Child protection
Campaigns like No Child for Sale that fight child labour, trafficking and early marriage.
Emergency relief
Food, shelter and safe spaces for children when conflict or disaster strikes.
Microfinance through VisionFund
Small loans, savings and insurance that help parents earn more and provide for their children.
Where WSI has helped
VisionFund and the SGB Fund
WSI has contributed to VisionFund International, World Vision’s microfinance network. Working with VisionFund, World Vision’s Small and Growing Businesses (SGB) Fund uses that network to find high-potential entrepreneurs in emerging markets who need a medium-sized loan to grow their businesses.
When those businesses grow, they hire local people, and more families can feed, school and protect their children.
Learn about VisionFund →On film
The Kili Climb 4 Kids documentary
The climb was captured in a documentary. Here are the World Vision and WSI teams on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
By the numbers
What it adds up to.
Twenty years of sponsorship, matching and fundraising across the WSI network.
20+
Years of the program, since 2005
1,200+
Children sponsored
$875,000
Raised for World Vision
80+
Countries in the WSI network
Where we’ve worked
Places this network has reached.
- Tanzania
- Rwanda
- Kenya
- Uganda
- Ethiopia
- Peru
- Canada (fundraising)
Every chapter here started with someone volunteering.
The next one is open. Bring your agency, your team, or just yourself.
Sponsored a child? Let us know each one — WSI will sponsor another child to match it.