Since 1950, when World Vision launched its operations by helping orphans and children in North Korea, many of the Federal Way-based organization’s key moments have been shaped by refugees and fragile states. Now, nearly 70 years later, the organization is honing in on that need with a new global strategy. It’s called Our Promise 2030, and it brings together World Vision’s many decades of experience, resources and programs to better help children and communities in the hardest places in order to accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

“In practice our core mission is around serving the most vulnerable children and the poorest,” says Jonathan Papoulidis, World Vision Executive Advisor on Fragile States. “We’re seeing that fragility is really the center of the global development crisis right now.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2030, about 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor will live in fragile states. Currently, the OECD lists 58 countries as “fragile contexts.” World Vision works in 38 of them and has long-term development programs in 24. In total, the organization, which is one of the world’s largest non-governmental aid agencies, works in nearly 100 countries.

“Thirty years ago or so, there were lots of different countries struggling with extreme poverty and disaster and conflict,” says Papoulidis. “We’ve seen global progress across the board in many of these places, except in these really fragile ones.”

Read the full story about World Vision by Joanne Lu at Global Washington.