Isabel Gomes highlights how children are paying the highest price for a shrinking aid system. She also sheds light on how cuts to humanitarian funding are forcing impossible choices—who eats, who learns, who survives. Signaling about a system under strain, where children risk being pushed to the margins, she urges that governments, decision-makers, and donors ensure solidarity triumphs over indifference.

World Vision Advocates rally on Capitol Hill amid U.S. foreign aid cuts, showing how strategic advocacy can protect vital programmes for vulnerable children.

FY25 was a year of hard choices and courageous leadership. In the face of escalating global crises, we responded to 108 emergencies, reaching nearly 36 million people—including over 18 million children—with life-saving food, cash, health care, education, and protection. Determined to do more with less, we reimagined humanitarian operations, driving cost-efficiency and resilience while embracing digital transformation. Artificial intelligence and automation helped reinvest savings into communities, even as funding tightened. We strengthened the sector through training and surge capacity, deepened partnerships to champion child-focused humanitarian action, and pushed for a Humanitarian Reset—an aid system that is decentralised, inclusive, and accountable. In the world’s most fragile contexts, we proved that children can thrive when compassion meets purpose. FY25 wasn’t just about responding to crises—it was about shaping the future of humanitarian action.

The world stands at a humanitarian crossroads. As global humanitarian need reaches historic highs and funding for aid plummets, World Vision warns of a critical turning point for the world’s most vulnerable children.

Uwimana Antoinette, a 33-year-old mother of five, fled conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018 and resettled in Uganda’s Kyaka II settlement. Like many refugees, she initially relied on food aid and cash transfers but struggled to meet her family’s needs. Seeking alternatives, she joined the Ushindi Savings Group, a refugee-led initiative formed in 2019 to promote self-reliance through savings and small loans.

This article explores the reasons behind the distribution of food aid to 30,000 households in Kasai during the lean season. It explains how depleted food stocks, economic hardship, and climatic shocks pushed families, especially in the Demba territory of Kasaï-Central, to the brink of a food crisis. The piece highlights the joint intervention by the World Food Programme and World Vision through the General Food Distribution (GFD) project, detailing the essential food items provided and the timely impact on vulnerable households. Testimonies from beneficiaries and project staff illustrate how this assistance not only alleviated hunger but also contributed to improving nutrition and strengthening community resilience. The article also situates the crisis within the broader context of chronic food insecurity in the region, where more than one million people, particularly young children, remain at high risk of malnutrition.

Amid ongoing conflict, displacement, overlapping crises, and worsening climate shocks, humanitarian needs in the Middle East & Eastern Europe are soaring.