In photos:
24 memorable
moments from 2024

Solina prays with her children before they go to school in the morning. For her son, Abraham, 9, to be able to attend school each day, Solina has to carry him on her back up and down steep slopes, and then push him in a wheelchair when the trail levels out. Abraham is unable to walk because of cerebral palsy. USAID Uburezi Iwacu, World Vision, and other partners have reached 12,800 children, including Abraham, through the disability inclusion programme in Rwanda. The goal is to double that number by 2026.  

Judith, 14, holds hands with her friends, laughing as they play a simple game while the setting sun fades in her village in Malawi. These moments are rare and precious. “When you tell a child they don’t have food at home, the child is always sad,” says Dorika, Judith’s older sister and caretaker. “At the same time, they don’t play with friends. This affects the child a lot.”

Before the drought, their family’s harvest was plentiful — enough maize to fill two oxcarts, each carrying about 20 bags, with each bag weighing 110 pounds. This year, their family harvested only one. Hunger makes it hard for Judith to concentrate in school, placing her dream of becoming a nurse at risk. “If I fail at school, it means I will fail to reach my dream,” she says. “This pains my heart very, very much.”

Dorika says World Vision has helped ease some of the burden by introducing winter farming. With irrigation pipes and training, she now grows vegetables year-round, selling them at local markets. “Without that, we would’ve suffered a lot,” she says. Still, the struggle to provide enough food remains a daily challenge.

World Vision staff and volunteers in El Salvador are transforming dull buildings in remote communities into colourful, safe, and child-focused community centres. These spaces will be used for educational activities, community management projects, family-focused celebrations, and more. Once finished, they quickly become an integral thread in the fabric of the community.

Children participate in World Vision’s Child-Friendly Space in Dolaina District, Ghor Province, Afghanistan. This haven not only addresses critical child protection issues, such as child labor, child marriage, violence, and separation, it also provides children with opportunities for creativity, relaxation, and joy.

A memorial of crosses along the Lahaina Bypass erected for those who died in the 2023 wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century devastated the island in August 2023, levelling the historic town of Lahaina and claiming 102 lives, according to Maui County officials.

World Vision continues to support recovery efforts in the wake of the 2023 wildfires by aiding the work of local churches and community organisations through donations such as boxes of fresh food, household goods, hygiene supplies, and school backpacks.

One partner, Pukalani Community Church of the Nazarene, held monthly distributions in the first year following the wildfires. “We get 500 boxes of produce [for each distribution], and we roughly weigh that at 10,000 pounds,” Pastor Dylan Nails explains. “And so, we say we've done about 110,000 pounds since August of last year, since the wildfires. And as we could see, plenty of people are still in great, great need.” Those distributions can happen thanks to the generosity of World Vision’s donors — both individuals and corporations — who have generously shared their resources in the wake of the wildfires. In the past year, World Vision has been able to provide over $600,000 in grant funding to Maui partners and reach 31,476 people in Maui with essential aid.

“There are disasters, and then … it fades away [from the news],” says Pastor Dylan, “but through the structure of World Vision and then who we are as a church, we’re in it for the long run.”

Every day 8-year-old Mervis (centre) and her 13-year-old sister, Donata (right), walk to the water source in Mbonechera, Malawi twice a day with their mother, Magdalena. Each trip takes an hour to go and return.

“Carrying such a heavy load takes a toll,” Mervis says. “I can’t twist my neck. When I put the bucket down, I feel like there’s still something on my head.”

She adds: “My head feels like it’s crushing.”

The girls go with Magdalena first thing in the morning from 5 to 7 a.m. on school days. But even so, sometimes they get to school late. When that happens, sometimes they’re sent home. Magdalena says, “I feel pain in my heart because the challenge of water made my children be late for classes.”

 Mervis knows that access to clean water would help move her closer to her dream of being a pilot — something she wants to do so she can fly celebrities around. “Having clean water helps one not to get sick. This will help me to achieve my goals,” she says. “Having water close by would help me to have enough time to study.”

Michael, 70, and his wife, Joyce, smile as they participate in Apostolic Faith Church’s Global 6K for Water in Chicago, Illinois. Michael has participated in the event for the past seven or eight years, inspired by his pastor’s encouragement to help those in need. “Christ always asks us to be available to help those who don’t have what we have because we are one body,” he says.

 Joyce, who joined the Global 6K events starting in 2020, adds, “We do it together because we are a couple and we work together for the Lord. And it’s all about helping those in need.”

After her traumatic escape from Sudan to Chad, Tahani brought her severely malnourished 21-month-old twins, Adam and Adeeb (on her lap), to a Red Cross nutrition and rehabilitation centre supported by World Vision. The good news: With constant care and nutrition-rich food, the twins are no longer in a critical state.

In 16-year-old Elvis’s community in Ayacucho, Peru, children with disabilities are typically kept at home, deprived of education, friendship, and community. Undervalued and neglected, they rarely realize their full potential. But Elvis’s mother, Margarita, who has not one but four sons with disabilities, sees each of them as a gift from God. When World Vision invited Elvis to join an entrepreneurial training programme called Youth Ready, Margarita had no objections. At Youth Ready, he learned to cook and how to put together a business plan. At the end of the programme, he won a grant of $500 in seed capital to start his own business: a food cart that he runs with his brothers Frank, 21, and Snieder, 13, with help from their parents. Together, they push their cart to the local university to sell sausages, fries, and coleslaw to the students coming and going. The boys are conquering the streets of Ayacucho and contributing to the family’s income in a way that their neighbours never thought possible.

More than 3 million Sudanese people, like 8-year-old Hafisa, have fled their country. Hafisa brought a sibling with her to a place they can both play again — World Vision’s Child-Friendly Space in Milé Refugee Camp in Chad.

Joy watches her grandmother, Agnes, cook their dinner. Agnes had almost all her assets taken away when her husband passed away, as is the custom in her region in Kenya. Now, with support from World Vision, she is determined that all four grandchildren she cares for will get a good education.

Life in Wamba, Kenya is very difficult, especially for women and girls who spend a tremendous amount of time collecting water in the arid climate. But in the mornings, Naidimu, a mother of seven, prepares a meal for her children before they go to school. When they leave, she shares a quiet moment of care and nourishment with her youngest child, Masela.

Soaphea, 11, sits on the floor of her one-room stilted house, focused on her schoolwork. She lives with her grandparents in Cambodia’s Preaek Prasab, one of the country’s poorest regions. About a third of their home is too unstable to use, leaving them with limited space to sleep, work, and study.

Soaphea helps her grandmother, San, 71, collect and sell charcoal, vegetables, and water lilies to earn a small income. “I live one day by one day and I can’t think of another day — of the future and what it will be,” says San. “But after World Vision came to this community, I feel a little bit of hope. I feel happy because there’s some activity that is implemented within the community. I know the future is a little bit lighter than before.”  World Vision began working in Preaek Prasab in 2022 to support vulnerable families like Soaphea’s.

In a moment of shared laughter, Jeremy Willet sits with his sponsored child, 11-year-old Soaphea, and her family in their home in Preaek Prasab, Cambodia. Jeremy listens intently as Soaphea shares her dreams, her joys, and the challenges she faces.

Through his partnership with World Vision, Jeremy uses his talent as a speaker and storyteller to elevate stories like Soaphea’s. Across concert arenas in the U.S., he weaves her story into a powerful narrative of hope and resilience, inviting audiences to become part of the transformative work of child sponsorship. Jeremy is pushing to see a world where one million more children like Soaphea have the opportunity to thrive.

By focusing on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being of children, World Vision’s child sponsorship programmes tackle the root causes of poverty. The goal is not just to meet today’s challenges but to equip children, their families, and their communities with the tools they need to build a sustainable future.

In Tsetserleg, a district in Arkhangai Province, Mongolia, two boys bloom with laughter as lambs cuddle around them. The lives of these young animals are especially precious after the devastating dzud — a weather phenomenon where extreme winter conditions lead to mass livestock deaths, threatening livelihoods. Our teams are providing vital supplies and stress-management training to affected families. With support from USAID, World Vision is reaching 2,000 herders across five provinces to help communities rebuild and recover.

Ethel and her friends walk along the dusty path, each carrying buckets on their way to a dried-up riverbed in Malawi. Ten-year-old Ethel makes this journey at least once a day. The girls gather around holes dug into the dry riverbed, where water slowly seeps to the surface. They carefully scoop water into their 10-liter buckets before returning home with the weight of water on their heads. It’s a 45-minute round trip, and waiting in line behind others for the water to come often takes even more time.

Ethel’s mother, Madalos, feels a heavy heart watching her daughter take on the daily burden of collecting water for the family. “It affects her health and her education a lot,” she says. At her age, Ethel should be further along in school, but since Ethel doesn’t attend school every day, she’s only in grade 1. Her school is on the other side of the river, and last year, when the river was full and the current was strong, she was unable to cross it.

Across Ethel’s wider community, World Vision has partnered with another organisation to install water pumps. The closest one is 6 kilometres (3.7 miles) away, so for now, Ethel still walks to the river most days.

Two years ago, the young children in Hamaundu, Zambia, faced malnutrition. At that time, 30% of the children measured yellow on the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) tape, which means they were underweight and malnourished. World Vision trained community volunteers in the Safe Motherhood Action group (SMAG) about how to increase food’s nutrition using readily available food. These volunteers in turn taught mothers to add goat milk and eggs into porridge to make the meal more nutritious.

From left to right: Lumuno, Aubrey, and Rita all enjoy bowls of egg-fortified porridge.

Winnie, a SMAG member, says, “What we have discovered is that the health of the children has changed. When we take them for growth monitoring, none of the children are underweight.”

A mirror catches the reflection of Yessica as she kisses her beloved grandmother, Maria, who raised her. As a child, when Yessica looked in the mirror, she used to see herself through the eyes of children who mocked and criticised her. Today, she sees herself through God’s eyes: beautiful, capable, and full of potential.

Yessica’s family struggled as she was growing up, but after World Vision invited her to learn to farm and participate in Biblical Empowered Worldview classes, she’s now earning twice the average income for most people in Honduras — and helping others do the same.

Four girls play a game similar to patty cake in Wamba, Kenya. It’s not often that children — especially girls — in rural Kenya have time for playing. Every day, around the world, women and girls collectively spend 200 million hours collecting water. But this moment of fun shows the importance of children being able to just be kids.

Esnat, 42, cultivates her field while her granddaughter, 4-year-old Chisomo, rests in the shade.

Esnat and her husband, Nored, once lived season to season, just waiting for the rains to nourish their crops. “In the past, we were just living life as life. No plans. Just thinking of eating,” Esnat says. Nored adds, “This was our defeated attitude toward life.”

In December 2023, Nored attended a World Vision training on Biblical Empowered Worldview. One lesson stood out: to have vision. He learned that God always has a vision, and Nored wanted to have a vision for his whole family. He returned home, shared what he learned with Esnat, and together with their children, they created a vision board showing their goals through 2027.

Now, as Esnat and Nored work hard, that vision board hangs in their home, a constant reminder of their potential. “It has helped me to realise that I have a mission to achieve in life,” Nored says.

World Vision staff, Pastor Ambassadors, and volunteers lay hands on Pastor Gwen Jones of St. John Baptist Church in Arden, North Carolina, praying for her strength and leadership as she supports her community through the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. St. John Baptist Church, a local partner, served as a distribution hub for much-needed relief supplies delivered by World Vision. Families came to receive hygiene kits, clean water, food boxes, diapers, and other essential supplies.

Eager children surround Allan Agaba from World Vision Rwanda’s sponsorship team. The children are thrilled to see World Vision staff again after their community graduated a year ago.