About Us

Providing those in need with opportunity, dignity, and hope so they can possess the tools for change in themselves, their family and their community.

Our Story

Our Mission

World Hope International (WHI) is a Christian relief and development organization working with vulnerable and exploited communities to alleviate poverty, suffering, and injustice.

Organizational Goals and Objectives

Our vision is to provide those in need with opportunity, dignity, and hope so they can possess the tools for change in themselves, their family, and their community. WHI supports all people regardless of ethnicity, gender, race, or religion.

WHI uses market-based and community-driven enterprise solutions to empower, protect, and build resiliency through innovative, environmentally conscious, and transformative projects. We deliver our programming through strategic local and global partnerships to create a maximal, sustainable impact.

Core Values

WHI programs are developed within the framework of four core values:

Transformation: Individuals and communities are transformed into ones with dignity and wholeness through a spiritual, social, economic, and physical change.
Sustainability: Lasting impact is realized through locally sustainable programs.
Empowerment: Development occurs to the extent local communities, leaders, and individuals are empowered to affect change.
Collaboration: The means of development are demonstrated through partnering with the local community, like-minded organizations, and individuals.

The needs present in today’s world are complex and deeply interconnected. Our program areas complement one another and act as a comprehensive response to poverty.

ACCEPTING THE OPPORTUNITY TO INVEST IN OTHERS

Our Story

The roots of World Hope International began in the home of our dynamic founder, Dr. Jo Anne Lyon. From a humble start in 1996, God has blessed Lyon’s journey to serve those crippled by poverty. Her hope:

To empower the poorest of the poor around the world so they can become agents of change within their communities.

For more than 10 years, Lyon entered war-torn regions, abandoned communities and dark pockets of the world teeming with forced labor and prostitution. She looked at the bleakness and despair and saw how she could bring glimmers of light through opportunity, dignity and hope.

In collaboration with Lyon, Mrs. Anne Medders became Canada’s first Executive Director and officially created World Hope International (Canada) in 2000, in Sussex, NB. The first projects funded through WHI CA were in Odessa, Ukraine. The First Step Center was built as a safe place for social orphans, and the Hope Houses were built for girls who aged out of orphanages.

Today, World Hope International (Canada) works to assist children in securing documents which prove their existence. We assist teenage girls in getting education and learning to survive in the world. We teach sixteen-year-old children who are about to be phased out of government orphanages the life skills needed to avoid human trafficking. WHI CA provides a home for vulnerable girls who live with a house mother while studying in university, college, or technical school. A second home was opened in the summer of 2015. WHI CA has developed and implemented a foster care program, and several foster families provide loving homes for girls who study and prepare to live independently.

World Hope International continues its mission as a voice for the silent, an opportunity for the oppressed and water for those who thirst. WHI helps provide the dignity that comes from an educated mind, a healthy body, an honest day’s wage and a safe place to heal. WHI is the one who comes alongside those gripped by poverty to offer a hand up instead of a handout. But more than anything, World Hope International is the reflection of Jesus Christ’s compassion for all who suffer.