World Neighbors
Who is World Neighbors?
World Neighbors is an international development organisation. Their approach is unique – they do not give away food or material aid. Instead, they provide training so that people gain the skills and leadership to work together for change. They operate programs for an average of 5 to 10 years, and take pride that most of their experienced International Program staff and volunteers are local people from the countries in which they work. As World Neighbors moves to other areas of need, they leave behind a network of leaders with the skills to enable the community to undertake development initiatives on their own.
Their approach is simple. In cooperation with their global neighbours, they:
• Select the areas where they work on the basis of need and opportunity.
• Listen to what the community have to say & what limits their success and establish a relationship
of trust.
• Help strengthen the recipient’s capacity to identify, analyse & solve their own problems using
locally available resources and the simplest tools to do the job.
• Try new ideas on a small scale. Stay practical to generate early enthusiasm & success.
• Help document the results and apply lessons learned to improve programs.
• Reinforce their capacity to maintain & multiply results and ongoing problem-solving processes
by forming new partnerships and by coordinating with additional villages & local organizations.
• Widen program impact by documenting and sharing the results and processes with larger-scale
organizations, villages, networks, coalitions and governments to in fluence policies and actions.
Supported by:
Mat Hoffman