Unexpected Partners: Why the most powerful partnerships are the ones you have to go looking for

Ian de Villiers, Senior Partnering Specialist, World Vision International 

The challenges facing children today are too complex for any one organisation to solve alone. Ian de Villiers says when organisations combine their strengths, they can deliver deeper impact, reach the most vulnerable, and create lasting change for children and communities.

In Colombia, A young woman from a vulnerable family is training as a barista in Bogotá, and in rural areas, amidst coffee fields, another young woman is starting her own business. In Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, a teenage girl is presenting recommendations on digital safety to national policymakers. These are not isolated stories, these are the stories that unfold when the right organisations find each other, and partnership is taken seriously.

The causes of child vulnerability are too deep and complex for any one organisation to address. World Vision partners with over 13,000 organisations, large and small, across more than 80 countries. The number is not the point, but the range, and the impact on children the range makes possible.

From a job to a future. In Colombia, World Vision's Youth Ready programme has spent four years building alliances with the coffee sector — Starbucks, Juan Valdez, local barista schools, and coffee cooperatives — to open employment and entrepreneurship pathways for vulnerable young people. The coffee industry needed trained workers. Young people needed a credible route into dignified work. Neither could build the bridge alone. More than 80 young people have been placed in jobs so far, and the model is now expanding across nine other countries. 

From participation to policy. In Mongolia, World Vision partners with the Volunteer Centre of Mongolia to run the national Because I Am a Girl and Because I Am a Boy platforms, giving children a safe, visible space to speak on issues that matter to them. The Volunteer Centre brings national convening power and a volunteer network World Vision could not replicate. World Vision brings child safeguarding expertise and rights-based content. Together, over 345 children annually contribute to national dialogue — and their voices are reaching decision-makers.

From warning to action. In Zimbabwe, World Vision partners with the Catholic agency CARITAS Zimbabwe to implement an anticipatory action protocol in Nkayi district, acting before crisis hits rather than after. CARITAS brought established community presence and trust in the district; World Vision brought technical coordination and donor management. The partnership was tested when geographic redesign was required mid-project: and it passed because both organisations were committed to transparent renegotiation.

From ignored to included. World Vision Haiti has developed a long-term partnership with the government’s Bureau du Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Intégration des Personnes Handicapées (BSEIPH), dedicated to the integration of people living with disabilities. This partnership helps locate people with disabilities throughout the country, particularly those living in World Vision’s Development Program Zones.  Thanks to this partnership, World Vision Haiti has been able to identify and serve dozens of people with disabilities who might otherwise have been left out.

From access to accompaniment. In Chad, World Vision is partnering with the Association for Humanitarian Action and Sustainable Development (ACHDR), a national NGO with deep presence in the Lac province. Together we work on a resilience programme, supporting people displaced by Boko Haram attacks in one of the world's most fragile operating environments.  ACHDR holds the community trust and geographic access that World Vision alone cannot guarantee, whilst World Vision accompanies with technical and capacity strengthening support, donor relationships and supporting compliance architecture.

From implementer to leader. In the Central African Republic, World Vision is partnering with a Christian women’s organisation, Association des Femmes Évangéliques de Bossangoa (AFEB) under an ECHO-funded education in emergencies and WASH programme.  AFEB, with two decades experience, brings local legitimacy and access that an international actor cannot replicate. The partnership is designed not just to transfer activities, but to progressively transfer capability and responsibility: joint assessments, a tailored institutional strengthening roadmap, embedded mentoring across the full programme cycle, and tools progressively integrated into AFEB's own systems. The exciting long-term vision is to accompany AFEB until it can lead responses in its own right, access institutional funding directly, and become a prime actor in CAR's humanitarian architecture. That is what localisation actually looks like: not a compliance checkbox, but a years-long investment in future capability and a deliberate shift in where humanitarian capacity, decision-making and leadership ultimately sit.

These six partnerships span private sector and faith actors, civil society and humanitarian responders, established organisations and emerging ones. They operate in stable middle-income countries and in some of the world's most fragile contexts. What they share is not a template. What they share is a conviction: that the right partner, found deliberately and engaged equitably, can reach places and people and outcomes that no single organisation ever could.

When we are intentional enough to find the right partners, deliberate enough in co-creation to build something neither could design alone, and disciplined enough in our principles to make it work when it gets hard, we go further than we ever expected.

About the author:
Ian de Villiers is the Senior Partnering Advisor, for World Vision International providing strategic leadership and capability development in working with partners across World Vision, including work on civil society, locally-led development and capacity building