Placing children at the centre of humanitarian response through partnership with WFP
Rome, Italy: World Vision had the opportunity to attend the World Food Programme Executive Board First Regular Session that focused on key priority areas of innovation, strengthening surge capacity, humanitarian–development–peace nexus, resilience and localization strategies.
World Vision through our strategic partnership with WFP takes every opportunity, including the Executive Board, to place children and their families at the centre of humanitarian action.
The session held on-line and in person, on 18 and 19 February 2025, not only recognised the tireless efforts of WFP and partners to save and change lives around the world in extremely challenging conditions, but also acknowledged initiatives to enhance the effectiveness of food assistance by following a people-centred approach, strengthening its partnerships, and combining emergency response with work on building resilience and addressing the root causes of food insecurity.
The discussions highlighted that WFP and WV share a vision for a world where new technologies (e.g. AI), data driven decision-making, data responsibility, and research and innovation have the potential to increase our agility to respond, as well as improving our ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, such as cash in remote locations, thus transforming the life of the people we jointly serve.
Highlights of the session included the approval of WFP policy cycle framework, findings of the evaluation of WFP’s environmental and emergency preparedness policy and management response, as well as updates on the ongoing implementation of the new global assurance framework which is aimed at strengthening accountability throughout WFP.
Photo Credit: WFP/Daria Addabbo
These policies and projects laid the groundwork for the development of WFP next strategic plan (2026-2029), which will see the active contribution of World Vision around the plan’s evidence base and some emerging key themes.
World Vision, a long-standing partner of WFP, shared the common goal of supporting the most vulnerable children to overcome poverty and experience fullness of life through our partnership approach to respond to increasing hunger hotspots and complex humanitarian crises.
Through our partnership with WFP, we aim to prioritise locally-driven, child-focused perspective in key partnership areas (Food Security, School Meals, Integration of food security and child protection, Hunger, Resilience, Localization and Data Protection).
As part of our engagement priorities with WFP, World Vision is committed to representing a trusted go-to-intermediary, WFP’s preferred partner of choice for coordination and capacity sharing, an enabling partner who can help create the conditions that empower and support local and national key players to take on central decision-making roles and amplify their impact at the systems level.
Article by Viviana De Annuntiis, Humanitarian Policy and External Engagement Advisor, Disaster Management, Global Centre.
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