World Concern

WORLD CONCERN IS A nondenominational international Christian humanitarian organization. It is a ministry of CRISTA, a Seattle-based group of related ministries. World Concern provides emergency relief and community development services to the poorest in many places in the world, including some of the most neglected, without regard to race or creed.

Dr. Wilbert Saunders and Jim McCoy, a pharmacist, founded World Concern in 1955. In the beginning it was focused on medical missions and had the name Medicine for Missions. Its primary concern at first was sending medical supplies overseas to mission workers. In 1973 Medicine for Missions was reorganized, renamed, and reoriented in the focus of its mission.

Like many other nonprofit corporations, this legal status encourages giving because donors receive a tax benefit for their donations. In addition, World Concern is a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), which is a publicly operated agency for certifying the fair and responsible use [Page 1187]of charitable donations. ECFA uses seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship in order to satisfy public trust, standards that World Concern also follows.

World Concern currently serves families in 32 countries. Its mission goal is the reduction of human misery of the poor both physically and spiritually by means of relief for acute suffering and development programs to end chronic suffering. Moreover, it seeks to give hope for a life lived in a right relationship with God. World Concern's operations are conducted by a staff of 900 professionals and by over 1,300 volunteers. The volunteers are teachers, veterinarians, and other professionals, many of whom travel to impoverished areas to work on poverty projects. Sometimes World Concern acts as an agency for relief or development in cooperation with other nongovernmental organizations and with government sources of aid.

World Concern's development services teach self-development behaviors to the poor. This mission strategy rests on its belief that people are the best agents for solving their own problems. World Concern believes that the family is the cornerstone of every community. Therefore it seeks to serve the poorest families on a global basis with food and meaningful work. At the same time it seeks to share love of Christ in culturally sensitive ways. World Concern uses the World Concern Strategic Index each year to rank countries for degree of suffering, from the greatest to the least. It then uses prayer and the suffering index scores to decide where to direct its resources to meet the most severely neglected needs. Most of the projects and operations are in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

World Concern's program has continued to expand, as its budget for 2006 was estimated to be $88 million. It uses four percent of its budget for administrative costs, with the remaining 96 percent going to its programs and projects. In 2006 it had 60 projects in 18 countries. Recent relief projects included service to tsunami victims following the great tsunami of December 26, 2004, in the Indian Ocean.