World Humanitarian Day: Why our workers stay

Every August 19 the world marks World Humanitarian Day.

Many of us picture a humanitarian worker as someone who flies in. A stranger in a vest, stepping off a plane into somebody else's disaster.

That is not who they mostly are.

In 2024, 97 per cent of the humanitarian workers killed on the job were nationals of the country in which they were serving. They were the nurse from two streets over. The person who trained teachers in the local school. The driver who knows the road because he grew up on it. When the shelling starts they do not leave, because their family lives in the same town.

That year was the deadliest on record, with 383 humanitarian workers killed.

So why stay? Ask them and the answers are very practical. Someone needs to care for wounded children in the clinic. Or maybe the children in the feeding centre are expecting them. Because it’s their country, they care very much.

World Vision has worked this way since 1950, when we partnered with local Korean church leaders to care for children orphaned by the Korean War. Our teams are still made up mostly of people serving in their own countries.

We believe every child is made in God's image and has a right to the care and support that they need.

You are part of this. Every safe water point, every packet of therapeutic food, every classroom that reopens reaches a child through a series of people. You are among them. You cared enough to help put the food packets in the hands of hungry children. You celebrate with us when a school reopens after an earthquake. Meet some of them.

This World Humanitarian Day, would you consider going a step further? A gift to our emergency response work keeps trained local teams ready to move in the early hours after crisis hits and stay the course in the months and years to come. And tonight, would you pray for the people you just watched?

Give to emergency response