The Difference Between Compassion and World Vision

I've been wanting to respond to this question for quite a while as it is one of the top questions I get asked as a leader with World Vision. This post isn't meant to say which organization is better as they both are great organizations but rather to talk about how each one works in a community. Our conversation with the World Vision Ethiopia National Director, Tenagne Lemma was very informative for many reasons. Tenagne was the former National Director for Compassion here in Ethiopia. It was interesting to ask her the differences between World Vision and Compassion as she knows both organizations extremely well. It was obvious that she loves both and believes that they are both making a difference.

First of all she told us that there are many similarities to the organizations. In terms of their Christian focus, passion and work with the poor, they are both committed to those. She believes that both models will make a difference in the community. One of the things she clarified to me was that was people often talk about Compassion being child focused and World Vision being community focused. She told me that she would describe World Vision as being child focused and community focused.

When Compassion goes into a community they find a strong local church and they partner with that church to launch a Christian School. Most of their work happens in and around that church. They typically have about 300 sponsored children in each church project. The sponsored children come to the school where they receive many of their services (health care, food, education etc…).

When World Vision goes into a community they find a group of leaders (pastors, political, tribal, influencers) and they begin to ask the question – what are the greatest needs of this community? If it is schools, we focus there, if it is health we focus there. From there they identify the most vulnerable children in the community who become the World Vision sponsored children. These children represent a wide cross section of children from different backgrounds. And although there may be 1000 to 5000 children sponsored in a community, every child in the community has access to the improvements provided through sponsorship dollars (new schools, health clinics and initiatives, etc...) One community here in Ethiopia had a epidemic of tricoma an eye disease effecting over 10,000 people. World Vision launched a campaign to eradicate the disease and a few short years later there were only three cases of tricoma. It is on its way to being eradicated forever in this community benefiting sponsored and non sponsored children alike. Over the next 20 years, World Vision will focus on strengthening water, health care, education, food security, micro finance and equipping the churches and pastors in the community. After the local community and church is trained, resourced and empowered to be self supporting, World Vision will transition to another community (typically 15 to 20 years).

Tanagne said that Compassion makes sure that every child is given the opportunity to receive Christ. Compassion doesn’t preach the Gospel but the local church does. World Vision is similar. They empower the local church to do the work of the Gospel in both word and deed. One of the local pastors told me that preaching the Gospel is easy but living it is the hard thing. Tamarit told us of an area named Tiay where we began work 19 years ago. When we began our work there were no churches in the entire community. Today there are 25 churches with five of them being in Muslim communities. They said that World Vision’s community development acts a springboard to take the gospel and that World Vision’s Christian staff become crucial agents in growing and strengthening the local church. Our job is to make sure we equip and support the local church to thrive in an area.

Tenagne said that one of WV’s great strength is that we do not differentiate between religion. This enables us to work with both Christians and to reach out to non-Christians. One of the commonalities between WV and Compassion is that we don’t preach the Gospel but rather we equip the church to do that. She said that preaching the Gospel is really the easy thing to do, living the Gospel out is the more difficult thing to do. If we can do that, we can change the world.

WV Ethiopia has a bright future with Tenagne at the helm. I’m extremely impressed with her passion and leadership. She is one of the top Christian leaders I have met in my travels to more than a dozen countries with World Vision. Thank God for leaders like her.