Aimee and Dan F.

Financial industry
World Vision Early Childhood Education (ECE) Supervisor Thanaa supervises teaching of Syrian refugee children at an Early Childhood Education program.
World Vision staff nutritionist, June Cherutich gives baby Akusi, 9 months, Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) after finding that she is severely malnourished.

by Heather Klinger

Over the past 15 years, Dan F. has gradually become well acquainted with World Vision’s work and staff by investing in multiple community development sectors, including economic empowerment and water, sanitation, and hygiene. That gradual relationship has coincided with becoming more and more confident in World Vision.

“When you see the numbers line up and then you are impressed by the quality of World Vision’s staff, it’s pretty easy to pull the trigger on some larger investments,” said Dan, now 40. “I am confident that our money is being put to good use and is making a significant difference in people’s lives.”

On a trip to Zambia in 2010, Dan not only visited a well he’d paid for but also met the community members who are benefiting from the water project. He saw how World Vision partners with communities for sustainable change. 

“The community members I met in Zambia take tremendous pride in their new well because they are actively engaged in the full process of planning, implementation, and maintenance,” Dan said. “Instead of treating people like helpless victims, World Vision invests in them, trains them, and builds up their capacity to continue driving their lives forward. They are the protagonist of the stories, and we are the supporting cast who helped them achieve their goals. It is amazing to see.”

Halfway through his journey with World Vision, he met his wife, Aimee. She said that being involved with World Vision is so important to Dan, and she has learned more and more about the organization through him.

“I soon became just as impressed with World Vision and the good work they do as Dan is,” said Aimee.

Before 2015, the vast majority of Dan and Aimee’s generous donations were allocated to long-term community development projects in stable countries. That all changed right after their first child’s birth — when they first learned about the Syrian refugee crisis.

INVESTMENT

$1.7 million towards emergency relief and fragile contexts

 RESULTS

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Over the past three years, their investment has helped 21,926 Syrian refugees and displaced people and 28,232 people affected by the East Africa hunger crisis
Do your due diligence like we did. Meet the people. Look at the numbers. Do the math. You’ll find that this is a very, very good place to invest your charitable dollars.

Dan F Financial Industry

A Syrian refugee family in Lebanon warms themselves by a fire in a ditch in front of their tents, burning garbage -- mostly plastic -- to stay warm.

World Vision is equipped to help in ways we never could, and our support, combined with many others, is making this possible.

Aimee F

“I found myself spending a lot of time glued to the news coverage, cradling our newborn, and crying over the stories and images I was seeing,” Aimee said. “Dan and I agreed to focus as much giving as we could to support World Vision’s aid efforts in the region. It was the first time I’d ever felt that I wasn’t completely powerless to help people so far away who are suffering in such a dire situation.”

World Vision has been working in the Middle East for nearly 40 years and extended a helping hand to Syrian families beginning in 2011 when the Syria civil war began.

“World Vision is equipped to help in ways we never could, and our support, combined with many others, is making this possible,” Aimee said.

Syrian refugee teacher, Wafaa, (a former public school teacher) and her class play a game of follow the leader at World Vision’s Early Childhood Education program in Lebanon.Dan and Aimee have continued to serve the most vulnerable in their hour of greatest need. They now allocate a large portion of their family’s charitable investment portfolio to World Vision’s work in emergency relief and fragile contexts — where extreme poverty stubbornly resists solutions, but also where they recognize a dollar can have a “radical impact.”

Dan explained, “It’s riskier giving money to places like Syria or South Sudan, but there is so much suffering and so little help. I think of it as a high-risk, high-reward investment, but a short-term focus. It’s a very different mentality than I started off with WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene).”

With his background in the financial industry, Dan equates work in emergency relief and fragile states as credit card debt the world needs to pay off and community development work as the long-term investment portfolio.

“You need to pay off your credit card balance each month while building your long-term investment portfolio,” Dan said. “In the last couple of years, the magnitude of short-term needs has been so startling. Every dollar you can put in — it’s going to alleviate a tremendous amount of suffering today and help prevent a situation that’s already really bad from spiraling into something much, much worse.”

A World Vision food distribution at Naapong Food For Assets site in Turkana, Kenya.

In the past decade, the number of people affected by emergencies has almost doubled, and this number is expected to keep rising. World Vision is uniquely situated to respond to any disaster or humanitarian emergency — anywhere in the world — from immediate life-saving supplies when disaster strikes to long-term recovery work so people can rebuild their lives.

“You can give to the amateurs, or you can give to the people that have been really perfecting this for the last [nearly] 70 years,” Dan said. “World Vision is a very impressive team that takes a scientific approach.”

In 2017 alone, World Vision staff around the world, 95 percent of whom work in their home region, responded to 170 emergencies and assisted approximately 13.8 million people in 56 countries.

“From the crisis relief standpoint,” Dan said, “it makes a really big difference to me that when something goes wrong somewhere in the world, whether it’s a hurricane or war or famine, it seems like a lot of organizations fly in and try to help, but World Vision is usually already there, and they’ve already been there for decades.”

Dan and Aimee see their investment as an opportunity to live out the radical message of Jesus by helping people in the most desperate situations.

“Probably the best way to introduce people to Christ is by living out compassion,” Dan said. “There are a lot of people in the world right now who are very turned off by Christians. They have good reason to be. But when we go out and we really try to minister to the least of these — the people that are on God’s heart — we’re showing people an image of God that’s a lot more accurate than the image they’re seeing in the media.”

Overall, Dan and Aimee are focused on making sure everything they invest in is a cause they really believe in. They say they feel a God-given responsibility to be part of God’s kingdom in terms of alleviating suffering throughout the world and a high accountability for how they do so.

“We’ve come to our current charitable portfolio by really thinking about where our dollars should go first and then thinking about the most trustworthy institution to be tasked with deploying these dollars,” Dan said. “We take stewardship very seriously. World Vision is the largest charity in our philanthropic portfolio because we view it, based on our due diligence, to be a very high-quality organization.”

A World Vision food distribution at Naapong Food For Assets site in Turkana, Kenya.

Dan and Aimee's story is the final one in our series about some of our major donor partners. Read about how their contributions are helping to end extreme poverty.

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Aimee and Dan F.

Financial Industry