Lutheran World Relief, Inc.

Lutheran World Relief's mission is to work with Lutherans and partners around the world to end poverty, injustice and human suffering.We accomplish this by working in rural communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia and the Middle East to:* Develop strong local economies that allow families to increase their incomes and assets* Build resilient communities, helping people to increase their ability to influence, respond and adapt to changes in their environments, and recover from conflict and disaster more quickly.* Mobilize millions of Lutherans to put their faith into action using LWR's sustainable development, responding to God's call to love and serve the neighbor in need.

Lutheran World Relief approaches the goals outlined above through clearly defined strategies for four objective areas: Agriculture; Emergency Operations; Climate; and Constituent Engagement. Each objective area includes 3-4 core program approaches. For example, LWR's agricultural approach includes working with agricultural value chains, food security programming, capacity development for local partners, rural financing, and climate-smart agriculture. Emergency operations core programs include cash transfer; distribution of non-food items; early recovery and livelihoods programming; and quality and accountability capacity.

LWR was established in 1945 as a way for Lutherans in the United States to provide support to people in Europe who lost their homes and livelihoods during World War II. Since that time, LWR has greatly expanded our efforts, responding to needs around the globe. Here's what uniquely qualifies us to do the work that we do:Our Reach and Staff* LWR currently has offices in fifteen countries (six in Africa, five in Asia and four in Latin America) as well as in five U.S. states (Maryland, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania).* A staff of 152 individuals, each of whom is dedicated to ending poverty, injustice and human suffering and committed to LWR's values of gratitude, accompaniment, calling, stewardship and innovation.* LWR's international staff collectively includes both sector experts relevant to our relief and development work (emergency response, agriculture, malaria, etc.) as well as community development specialists who ensure projects and initiatives consider the whole picture and the many factors that contribute to the sustainability of a project.* LWR's international staff are primarily from the communities where they work and have a close familiarity with the local people, culture, language and context* LWR's US-based team includes communicators, educators, theologians and connectors able to mobilize, educate and engage individuals and congregations in putting their faith into action through this important work. Our Partnerships:* LWR has a financially strong, diverse and consistent funding base, comprising donations from Lutheran individuals, congregations and church bodies as well as government and foundation grants.* We are proud to name among our partners the United Nations Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Osprey Foundation.* We also enjoy a relationship with the two major Lutheran church bodies in the U.S.: The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod and The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.Our Stewardship* With core values of stewardship and innovation, we are always seeking to make the best use of our resources, learn from our successes and challenges and remain open to change for the better* LWR has made ongoing investments in our capacity and systems to support our operations, financial management, knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation, and safety and compliance, to achieve our goals.

LWR has significant evidence of progress-to-date toward accomplishing our goals and objectives. Following are illustrative examples of those accomplishments* In LWR's fiscal year 2013 (October 2012 - September 2013), we reached 7.8 million people in 35 countries through 185 projects. We responded to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, while also providing continued recovery assistance in Haiti and varied locations in South and Southeast Asia from previous disasters* In 2013, through the generous support of Lutherans and others in the U.S., LWR provided Quilts, Personal Care Kits, School Kits, Baby Care Kits and Sewing Kits valued at $14.3 million to 841,000 people in 21 countries* We have developed a comprehensive Design, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework to ensure all projects are well-designed and equipped to measure for impact, and learn from the evaluations; we have also recently completed an external evaluation of our strategic plan to ensure it is strong and effective. Future goals include full implementation of the new tools that enable us to better report impact and outcome data not just at a project level, but for countries, regions, sectors, and globally.