Dressed in scrubs and pink vinyl aprons, caps and the odd surgical mask, midwives hustle between beds in the delivery room at the Herat maternity hospital in western Afghanistan. In other countries, teens like these are attending high schools, watching movies, going on dates. But in Afghanistan, the...

Inside the small, dilapidated building structure that serves as the Al Shoumo’ community centre (“Candle Centre”) in the village of Al Maasara, just south of Bethlehem city, 12-year-olds, Balqis Hassan Burjiyeh and Mohammad Abu Hilewa seem wise beyond their years, almost as if they are adults trappe...

The door is locked and the cry of the baby can be heard through the broken window glass. His cry goes unanswered until several minutes later, when a middle-aged woman comes out of the neighbouring shack. “Donika is not here, she went to get water,” says the elderly neighbour.

“Here ...

Slavko Djurkovic (55), husband, father, grandfather, and sole breadwinner in the family, received a dairy cow from World Vision through the Linking Farmers to Dairy-Processing Companies project. Despite his severe sight impairment, and a modest monthly pension of just US$200, Slavko manages to take ...

At the beginning of November, about 100 Romanian teenagers, beneficiaries of two World Vision Romania scholarship projects, got together to talk about poverty. At one point, those witnessing the discussion were able to see how a small ray of optimism was emerging as they began talking about spiritua...

Cows mooing softly, olive trees, stone houses and fields make up the landscape of Aboud in West Ramallah. In any other place the cows standing side by side in the small building structure that serves as a housing shed would not be anything out of the ordinary, but here in Aboud, these cows represen...

Father of four Artak Haroyan, 34 has worked tirelessly to support his family but lack of resources has meant living off his land has been both demanding and unprofitable. To supplement the low income he has spent a significant period of time away from his family doing seasonal jobs in Russia. When A...

In Romania, six women die every day from cancer and more than 3,000 women are diagnosed with cancer, annually. Their children often end up in children’s institutions or become head of the household, taking over their mother’s responsibilities and caring for younger siblings. Ana is one of those chil...

Elmas Sali, a 40-year-old Roma woman from Cobadin community in Romania’s Constanta County shares the grief of losing five of her children; a girl who died when she was 15 and four children under age one. She describes her three other children as the ‘sun’ of her life, yet sadly, due to poverty, poo...

“I gave birth to three children with hope of better days. Both my husband and I were working hard to improve our living conditions little-by-little. But this financial crisis changed all our plans”, shares Manushak Zakharova, 44.

Five-year-old Smbat wasn’t sleeping well, didn’t have the energy to climb trees and often missed school due to his poor health – until he was diagnosed with inflamed tonsils by World Vision Armenia’s Medical Outreach Team specialists. Since undergoing surgery Smbat’s health has improved drastically ...

Nearly 2,000 households across six communities in Armenia’s Stepanavan region are still counting the cost of a hail storm in August that wiped out 3,045 hectares of crops. Some of the flourishing crops had been cultivated using modern methods introduced by World Vision and farmers were confident tha...

If you stumbled upon a small clearing this July while hiking in Auadkhara, a camping ground high up in the Caucasus mountains above Lake Ritsa in Abkhazia, you would have happened upon a large group of tents, make-shift washing station, mess tent, and metal structure for cooking. You would have also...

Forty-three children from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and from three different faiths; Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Islam, recently attended a Summer Camp, run for the fourth consecutive year through World Vision’s Combating HIV and AIDS project. Adrijana (16), Svjetlana (15) and Saliha (16)...

“My children benefited a lot from the centre. They used to spend all their time at home after school and talking about the things that were happening in Iraq. When they started attending classes at the World Vision centre, they would come home and be busy practicing things like art and music that th...