World Vision advocates for a comprehensive approach to Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE), which includes economic progress for women, access to chances and resources, the ability to make decisions, and equity in systems. Additionally, World Vision works to eliminate harmful social norms and address issues of Gender Based Violence. 

As part of our WEE work, we help women form businesses, either as individuals or as groups, by providing vocational skills training and financial literary.  These income generating activities not only help women to support their families, it encourages women’s participation in the community, improving their sense of agency, confidence and involvement in decision.

We help communities establish Savings Groups for members of the community who cannot access savings and loans facilities from banks or micro finance institutions. A Savings Group is a group of community members who come together voluntarily to save money together. They are owned, managed and operated by their members using a simple, transparent mechanism by which they can convert small amounts of cash into savings and then draw upon small, flexible loans when needed.

Membership of a Savings group helps families plan for and meet essential healthcare and education cost, and cope with emergencies and life events without being exposed to debt.  It also helps families build up capital to make smalls investments to gradually work their way out of poverty.

We also connect families to World Vision’s VisionFund network of microfinance institutions, enabling access to small loans, savings accounts and financial training that help them grow businesses and build long-term financial resilience.

World Vision strives to empower youth and adolescents with short, medium and long terms skills development that not only prepares them for adulthood, but prepares them to take advantage of economic opportunities both on and off the farm. This includes providing youth with the opportunity to gain vocational and technical skills, and improving access to the services, resources and relationships required so they can start their own business or gain employment. Life skills such as communication, critical thinking and collaboration are all critical, alongside financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills.

Supporting farmers to grow more crops is only half the battle. Small scale farmers often find it difficult to secure a decent price for their produce. Many struggle to access profitable markets, are poorly equipped to analyse market trends and requirements, and lack the resources to take advantage of business opportunities. 

World Vision supports farmer’s groups with training in marketing and business skills to help them analyze and respond to opportunities, in order to obtain a better price. Farmers coming together in associations and cooperatives means they have better bargaining power, can access credit more easily and can pull their resources to better afford transport, seeds, tools and fertiliser. We also work with farmers to develop improved storage practices, and processing and packaging techniques that add value to their produce, so they can be more competitive.

We work to strengthen the impact and reach of Community Health Workers to provide basic preventive and treatment support in vulnerable communities. This includes promoting healthy practices, including infant and young childing feeding, for families.

We work with students, parents, teachers, community members, governments and local partners to ensure that:

1. Children are aware of their rights to safe, quality, inclusive  education and actively engage in their school environment
2. Teachers are equipped with skills and resources to deliver quality lessons
3. Parents can support their child's learning at home
4. Communities are engaged in the management of schools and equipped to advocate for improved education service.

World Vision prepares communities to assess risks and capacities, reduce those risks, and at the same time strengthen their resilience to disaster risks. For example, community members (both adults and children) receive life-saving training that will help them survive in the case of floods or an earthquake. Early-warning systems are installed, and specially strengthened houses and buildings are constructed to withstand disasters such as floods.

CSA is a sustainable approach to agricultural production that enhances the productivity of agricultural systems while also responding to and reducing the impact of climate change, in ways that are best suited to the local context. CSA can offer enhanced food and nutrition security by sustainably increasing the reliability and productivity of agricultural livelihood activities; increased smallholder resilience and adaptation to the likely effects of climate change and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and improved carbon sequestration (mitigation).

Conservation agriculture is a set of farming practices that help farmers achieve better yields and profits in the short term, while protecting and restoring the natural environment so it can continue to support livelihoods in the long term. The approach is based on making the most efficient use of available natural resources and biological processes above and below the ground, in order to improve crop yields and allow a greater variety of crops to be produced. The approach has proven effective over a range of environments and can be replicated easily at low cost.

Applying a NSA approach within our agriculture work, we aim to enhance year-round access to nutritious and diverse foods, increase income and empower individuals to meet their families’ needs.

World Vision is a global leader in integrating community development with ecosystem restoration for the most vulnerable communities. Our regreening communities project model address climate change and the exploitation of natural resources by guiding communities through a participatory environmental restoration process. A tailored set of solutions is selected by each community including scaling-up indigenous restoration practices, strengthening government partnerships for restoration, and introducing proven practices like Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). 

FMNR is a low cost land restoration technique. It is a community-led solution based on nature, aiming to reverse environmental degradation and tackles poverty. It involves the re-growth and management of trees and stumps from felled tree stumps, sprouting roots or seeds.  The re-grown vegetation – integrated into crop land or grazing pastures – helps restore soil fertility, protects from soil erosion and support the land absorb rainfall so it can be harnessed for crop production and replenish water sources. As a result, FMNR can double crop yields, provide a sustainable source of timber and firewood, fodder and shade for livestock, wild foods and nutrition and medication, and increased incomes and living standards for farming families and communities.

In emergency situations, international food assistance is a critical ‘safety net’ for children and their families who are unable to meet their food and nutritional needs, often due to natural or human-made disasters.

Through our World Food Programming we use food assistance and the provision of cash and vouchers in response to emergency situations, delivering food, or resources to buy food, to the neediest populations.

Working flexibly across this triple nexus unleashes the potential for deeper, transformational change, even in the most challenging contexts, for vulnerable children and families. World Vision aims to work both "in" fragility (protecting people's lives and rights, ensuring the survival of the most affected and most vulnerable children) and "on" fragility (addressing the root causes of fragility so that progress towards peace and stability becomes possible and contributes to communities' recovery and resilience after crises). World Vision Ireland has been implementing adaptive nexus programming since 2018 in South Sudan. 

Government commitments and budgets guarantee essential services to families: but in reality, the most marginalised often miss out when governments don’t fulfil their promises. Social accountability empowers communities to speak up and advocate for better services and policies from their governments. The Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) project model has been used across more than 50 countries since 2005 to help communities hold their local and national governments accountable, and work with them to improve services. It aims to encourage children and youth participation in community decision-making processes, as World Vision believes that creating spaces for children's activism has a transformative impact on their lives and has the power to change society for the better.