World Vision India

Organization

World Vision India, headquartered in Chennai, is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act of Tamil Nadu 1975. World Vision International has a certain level of control over World Vision India. The relationship with World Vision International is governed by the Covenant of Partnership, a document that all national members of the World Vision Partnership have to sign. According to this document World Vision India has to accept policies and decisions established by the International Board and must not establish an office or program outside the home country without the consent of World Vision International and the host country. Furthermore, with the exception of direct project founding, all funds intended for outside the home country have to be remitted through World Vision International and the financial planning and budget principles adopted by the International Board have to be accepted as well as an examination of the financial affairs of the World Vision India by Partnership representatives. By signing the Covenant of Partnership World Vision India, like all other national members of the World Vision Partnership, also subscribes to the Core Values, the Mission Statement, and the Statement of Faith of World Vision.The Statement of Faith corresponds to the Statement of Faith put forward by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)[4] as standard for their evangelical convictions [5] and is also defined in the Declaration of Internationalization (1978) as operational frame of the whole World Vision Partnership and its national offices.

History of World Vision in India

India as a country with a Hindu majority was already very early in the focus of World Vision which was founded in 1950 in the United States as a service organisation to support missionaries and is described by the anthropologist David Stoll as a child of the cold war. For example, incorporated the founder of World Vision Bob Pierce, a fierce anticommunist, scenes from India into the anticommunist movie 'The Red Plague', produced by World Vision in 1957 for founding and propaganda purposes. The scenes depicts allegedly "false" religions showing e.g. self-mutilating Hindu priests and makes the claim that Hindus, Buddhists and adherents of other religions could easily be converted into communists whereas only true Christianity is strong enough to resist communism. Thus, so the message of this movie and other similar movies produced by World Vision at that time, evangelism is necessary among Hindus and other non-Christian people to counter communism. Evangelism is according to an article published 2004 by the political weekly Tehelka still one of the main focus of World Vision India

As an organization World Vision started an office in Calcutta in 1962 which was one of the first offices outside the United States. In 1975 World Vision India was registered as a society in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Financing

In India, sponsorships provide the majority of resources for programmes implemented by World Vision. Donors and sponsors from 18 countries including over 10,000 Indians sponsor close to 200,000 children in 107 programmes around India. World Vision programmes also access resources from the Government of India as well as other countries such as U.S., Canada, UK, Japan, Finland and Ireland to mention a few.

Religious Conversion

As a subsidiary of the evangelical organization World Vision International, World Vision India often engages in conversion programs. In India, this is mainly targeted at the local Hindu population. It routes funding received from foreign countries to plant local churches and evangelical operations in India.

Child Sponsorships

World Vision India's child sponsorship programmes help needy children get access to clean drinking water, sanitation, education, skills for future livelihood, nutrition, health care and participate in an age-appropriate in development processes. The sponsorship amount per month is Rs. 800 (in India). It is different from a donation and anybody interested to be part of this sponsorship process can be involved.

Area Development Programs

Area Development Programmes (ADPs) are integrated development programme that help communities by assisting the children, families and the community block as a whole achieve the basic standards of the four ‘well-beings’, physical, intellectual, socio-economic and moral well-being. Each World Vision ADP touches the lives of 20,000 to 1,00,000 people. There are 162 ADPs spread over 25 states around the country, working in over 5000 communities.

World Vision India is involved in Programme on parenting and Model Anganwadi Centre.

Disaster relief

World Vision has been involved in every major disaster in India since storm surge from the 1977 Andhra Pradesh cyclone affected Machilipatnam. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1984), the Orissa Super Cyclone (1999) and the Gujarat Earthquake (2001) were among its major relief interventions. The recent Tsunami (2004) spread out the World Vision's India Tsunami Relief Team all over the coastal regions of the peninsula and the J&K Earthquake (2005) drew a team to the Himalayas

Child education

Child education is one of the main initiatives of World Vision. World Vision’s child sponsorship programmes aim to help families meet the education needs of their children through sponsorship. World Vision’s Child Education projects ensure that every child is given the right to education, especially between the age group of 6 to 14 years. During the 2011 Union Budget the organisation campaigned to help ensure that there was an increase in the current budget allocation of 4% for children education and development in the country.

Children's health

Children’s Health is one of the main issues that World Vision helps tackle in the country. Its Child Health Now campaign that focuses on reducing preventable deaths of children under five. Child Health Now was launched in Orissa due to high maternal and infant mortality rates

Criticism

In 2007 a tribal spiritual Hindu monk Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, who spent four decades in of tribal welfare, accused World Vision chief of Orissa India, Radhakanta Nayak, also a former civil servant and Rajya Sabha member from Congress, for the violence and attack to eliminate him. The swami also said that World Vision was pumping money into India for religious conversion and also during 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which is hidden from public discource. He also said that that World Vision was one of the top donors to NGOs in India and World Vision India was one of the top recipient of funds for Christian missionary activity in India in an interview. No substantiation of these claims has been found. In 2008 he was gunned down along with four disciples at kanyashram (Girls school) at Tumudibandh Ashram, about 100 km from Phulbani, the district headquarters of Kandhmal district on Hindu festive day of Janmashtami by a group of 30-40 armed men, and VHP alleged that the plot to kill was hatched in presence of Radhakanta Nayak, who claimed that charges were false.