As more than a year has passed since the coronavirus pandemic was declared, leading evangelical aid organization World Vision partnered with tens of thousands of faith leaders and communities worldwide to reach 59 million people through relief and virus prevention efforts.
Not long after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, World Vision, an interdenominational aid organization that operates in nearly 100 countries, launched the largest global response in its 70-year history.
Erica Van Deren, a senior program manager on World Vision’s emergency response team, told The Christian Post that as the world was shutting down, World Vision kept working since that is the purpose God has bestowed on the organization and its staff.
“COVID-19 has been our largest both domestic response and international response that we’ve ever organized as an organization,” Van Deren said in an interview. “It’s been a remarkable amount of work and really just a wonderful opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this really, really challenging time.”
World Vision U.S. President and CEO Edgar Sandoval said the response would not have been possible without partnerships of churches and pastors. World Vision partnered with over 124,000 faith leaders through networks already formed from responding to Ebola, HIV/AIDS and Zika virus in the past.
“This incredible work could not have been done without our valuable church partners,” Sandoval said in a statement. “The Church has been a force for good — living outside its four walls and working hand-in-hand with their neighbors to distribute life-saving food, PPE, and other essentials that saved lives.”
In the United States alone, World Vision worked with 1,300 churches and donated 3 million boxes of fresh food to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families program. The organization also provided 2.5 million units of personal protective equipment and impacted nearly 500,000 families by providing emergency essentials.
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