World Vision United States

World Vision was founded in 1950 by Dr. Robert Pierce ("Bob"), a young American evangelist minister whom the Youth for Christ missionary movement had first sent to China and South Korea in 1947.

[2] During his journey he was moved by one little girl's suffering to promise to the local church of the child a monthly sum to guarantee her protection.

In the 1960s, the group started providing food, clothing, and medical care to citizens of impoverished countries after natural disasters by soliciting donations from major corporations.

US president Richard Stearns (retired) stated that the group has a strict policy against proselytizing, which he describes as "... - using any kind of coercion or inducement to listen to a religious message before helping someone.

For example, World Vision responded to famine[17] in Ethiopia and North Korea, hurricanes in Central America, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean nations, earthquakes in El Salvador, India, Taiwan, Turkey and the Sichuan earthquake in China, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and war refugees in Kosovo, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Angola, and East Timor.

On March 1, 2011, along with 29 other faith-based groups, it sent a letter to the senate petitioning for the restoration of cuts made to foreign disaster assistance, global health, and food aid in the 2011 budget.

In 1999, the academic journal Development in Practice published an overview of World Vision's history focusing on the evolution of its global architecture.

[22] In August 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that "World Vision is a 'religious corporation' and therefore exempt from federal law barring faith-based discrimination, and thus was permitted to dismiss two employees who were fired because they did not believe in the "divinity of Jesus or the doctrine of the Trinity."

Judge Marsha Berzon of that circuit dissented, arguing that "Congress did not intend to allow all religiously motivated nonprofits to be exempt from the law."

[24] Facing protests from donors and the larger evangelical community after the announcement, World Vision reversed the policy change two days later.