World Relief
About World Relief
World Relief (WR) has worked with communities in over 80 countries to improve the health of millions of families. Our work in maternal and child health, nutrition, family planning, HIV and other health sectors is founded in our call to serve the most vulnerable. We partner with churches and communities to work toward sustainable, long-lasting transformation in the overall health of families.
WR works with communities to improve the health of the family by transforming health behaviors and reducing the morbidities and mortalities experienced by women, men, children, and youth. We do this by partnering with faith congregations and communities to work toward sustainable, long-lasting transformation.
Maternal Child Health and Nutrition
WR supports community ownership and leadership to support the health and well-being of families, especially of women, infants, and young children. Through community-based, participatory methods, WR maps formal and informal service providers and identifies service gaps and needs. Then WR engages communities to develop a joint vision for safe and healthy families, and equips local actors to ensure that young children have the best start in life, that parents thrive, that women and children have adequate nutrition, and that homes are safe spaces. Together, WR and these community actors often focus on women of reproductive age and very young children, ages zero to five, which is a critical time for saving women’s and children’s lives and ensuring that they thrive as they grow.
Care Groups
WR is recognized as a technical expert in community health and behavior change due to its development and scale-up of the evidence-based Care Groups model, a best practice for saturating communities with significant impacts on health behaviors and outcomes which has been adopted by national governments and implementing partners alike to address malnutrition, common childhood illnesses, and improve community health.
Strengthening Community Health Outcomes Through Positive Engagement (SCOPE) Project
SCOPE is a five-year USAID and PEPFAR funded project (2019 – 2024) that partners with local communities and host-country ministries of health to work through community health workers, faith communities and community groups to foster social behavioral changes around maternal and child health (SCOPE RMNCH), HIV (SCOPE HIV) and COVID-19 (SCOPE COVID-19) health outcomes.
World Relief Resources
World Relief at the 2022 CCIH Conference
- Breaking Silos at the Community-level for Improved Nutrition and Beyond: World Relief Rwanda (June 14, 8:00 to 10:00 am U.S. EDT)
- Community-based Initiatives from Across the Globe, Thacien Ndayisange, Project Coordinator, Family Planning (FP) and Health Projects, World Relief Burundi (Presenting in French interpreted into English) (June 14, 8:00 to 10:00 am U.S. EDT)
- Navigating Tough Issues by Developing Strong Community Systems: A Look at Adolescent Reproductive Health Programs in Senegal and a Global Curriculum engaging Faith Leaders, Dennis Mwangwela, MSc, Director for Integral Mission, World Relief (June 16, 8:00 to 10:00 am U.S. EDT)
- PEPFAR’s Faith and Communities Initiative: Perspectives from the Grassroots in Malawi, featuring: Peter Chalusa, Project Manager, World Relief (June 21, 8:00 to 10:00 am U.S. EDT)
- Health of Women and Children Working Group: What We Do and How You Can Be Involved featuring working group co-chair Allison Flynn, MPH, Senior Program Advisor for Health & Nutrition, World Relief (June 21, 8:00 to 10:00 am U.S. EDT)
- Social Norms Change and Family Planning in Malawi: Theology, Ethics, and Public Health in Conversation, featuring Emily Chambers Sharpe, Senior Technical Advisor, World Relief (June 23, 8:00 to 11:00 am U.S. EDT)
World Relief Blog
Loving Our Neighbors Living with HIV | In 2021 the SCOPE (Strengthening Community Health Outcomes through Positive Engagement) HIV project in Malawi trained over 4,000 volunteers, mobilizing them to improve HIV treatment literacy, to increase the number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) who start and are retained in HIV care and treatment, and to strengthen justice for children. Implemented by World Relief, this USAID-funded project is part of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) Faith and Communities Initiative and ends in September 2022. Read More
