Partnering
World Vision champions locally led development by partnering with local organizations across diverse contexts — sharing resources, building capacity, and advocating for equitable systems that elevate community leadership and drive sustained change.
Stronger Together
Achieving sustained child well-being — especially for the most vulnerable — requires collaborative solutions to complex challenges. To create meaningful, lasting change at scale, we work closely with partners at all levels. We believe that partnering with local actors leads to more empowering, equitable, and sustainable outcomes. Across all partnerships, we uphold the principles of transparency, equity, mutual benefit, accountability, and proactive risk management. We are also investing in stronger collaboration with local partners in humanitarian programming, recognizing that national civil society plays a central role in crisis response. Through our extensive humanitarian portfolio, we continue to strengthen local partnerships to enhance their effectiveness, sustainability, and capacity.
Examples of this at work
Across diverse contexts, World Vision partners with local actors to strengthen capacity and expand impact:
- World Vision is a long-standing advocate for locally led humanitarian response. We played an active role in the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, contributing to the creation of the Grand Bargain and becoming a signatory to its 10 commitments, which prioritize support and funding for local and national responders. Through our leadership in the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), we endorsed the Intermediaries Caucus outcome document, advocating for equitable partnerships and greater support to local actors. We have also adopted the Core Humanitarian Standards, which embed locally led principles into humanitarian programming.
In 10 countries, World Vision is working with 22 local partners through the USAID-funded Core Group Partners Project (CGPP) to support civil society engagement in polio eradication, as well as COVID-19 and global health security, alongside Ministries of Health, WHO, UNICEF, CDC, Rotary International, and others. We provide technical assistance and ensure quality and consistency across partners.
In Ukraine, World Vision is collaborating with local organizations through a USAID/BHA-funded consortium led by ACTED, providing protection, food assistance, WASH, shelter, and cash support. In some cases, we sub-grant funds directly, enabling local NGOs to lead implementation with our oversight and support. In others, we operate a hybrid model, working side-by-side toward shared goals — sharing capacity and U.S. government compliance expertise along the way.
In Syria, we have longstanding partnerships with local NGOs that bring deep sectoral experience and community trust. With USAID/BHA support, we have implemented WASH, shelter, protection, and health programming in northwest and northcentral regions.
In Venezuela, World Vision leads a USAID/BHA-funded consortium of INGOs and local NGOs to deliver food assistance, nutrition, WASH, and protection, working closely with local partners throughout implementation.
In Somalia, World Vision has worked with more than 40 LNGO partners to deliver emergency and recovery programs across food security, livelihoods, health, nutrition, protection, and WASH. Effective partnership with civil society, government, UN agencies, academia, and the private sector remains central to our strategy.
As fund manager for All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development, we focused on reducing barriers for local organizations — especially those led by persons with disabilities — while strengthening their technical expertise and shifting perceptions of local actors as key partners.
