Blog: Why the work of the Brussels office is critical to World Vision's mission

Welcome to our inaugural blog post. We intend to use this blog to explore the very real ways in which the policies and practices of the European Union (EU) impact on World Vision’s efforts to improve the lives of vulnerable children in some of the poorest parts of the world.

For now, let us use this opportunity to introduce the Brussels office, which is of critical importance to World Vision’s mission of achieving “for every child, life in all its fullness”. For the office in Brussels, the EU – the largest single donor for development aid, with an ability to shape global policy – is a key partner. The most important EU institutions we engage with are the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European External Action Service (the ‘foreign office’ of the EU). This happens in close collaboration with World Vision offices in EU member states.

Other EU institutions we collaborate with include the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Committee of the Permanent Representations of the Member States to the EU (COREPER).

We work with all these partners individually or together with civil society organisations, often through our contribution to sector platforms like CONCORD Europe (bringing together over 2,000 development NGOs in all EU member states) or VOICE (the platform of EU based humanitarian NGOs), but also in direct coalition with child-focussed NGOs like Save the Children and Plan International.

As well as linking World Vision’s vast experience and expertise in the field to the EU (and vice versa), the main strategic objectives of our office is to assist World Vision offices to access the EU’s considerable funding opportunities, and to lobby for policies and programs of the EU to work in favour of vulnerable children.

In respect of the latter, it should be recognised that impacting EU policies often leads to impacting global policies, given the huge role the EU – and key EU member states – play in important global bodies like the G8 and G20.

The nine members of World Vision’s Brussels office are highly international, and are supported by a number of bright volunteers and interns. Apart from a general administrative team there are two key departments: Programming and Resource Acquisition and Policy and Advocacy. Each of these two key departments is led by a Director, while the office in its entirety is headed up by EU Representative and Executive Director, Marius Wanders.

The entire Brussels team invests considerable time, energy and expertise in contributing to the work and leadership of platform organisations like CONCORD Europe and NGO VOICE. Through its Executive Director, the World Vision office in Brussels is also represented in the governing Board of CONCORD Europe and in the EU Group of Experts on Trafficking in Human Beings.