Member

The LWF is a global communion of 148 churches in the Lutheran tradition, representing over 77 million Christians in 99 countries. World Service is the humanitarian and development arm of the LWF. From LWF’s beginning in 1947, its member churches have mandated World Service as their key actor in international diakonia (service to others) to assist all those in need without discrimination of any kind. Today, World Service is a widely recognized, international, faith-based organization present in 27 countries. We seek to bring people of all backgrounds together in the common quest for justice, peace, and reconciliation in an increasingly complex and fragmented world.

Our work is people centered and community-based, collaborating very closely with affected populations including refugees, IDPs, returnees and other communities at risk. A defining feature of World Service is its local rootedness and global connectivity, linking local community voices with international dialogue, advocacy, and peace work. We seek to prevent the effects of poverty and injustice by building long-term resilience.

Our programmatic framework lifts up three areas of expertise in which LWF World Service already has a wealth of experience and a proven track record. Namely, it focuses on protecting and fulfilling the rights of refugees, IDPs, and returnees, as well as host and at-risk communities, to Livelihoods; Quality services; and Protection and social cohesion. These three areas cut across the humanitarian, recovery, and development phases of our work and embed advocacy and a rights-based approach into each one.

Our programmatic framework places the rights of refugees, IDPs, returnees, host- and at-risk-communities at the heart of any response; is intentionally integrated and complementary; is implemented at individual, community and institutional level; spans the emergency-recovery-development spectrum; and allows us to adapt our responses when contexts change.

Our initial interventions in a specific crisis situation often involve addressing immediate needs of local communities and populations in order to stabilize their situation, which helps build trust for longer term recovery and development.