Poverty affects all aspects of life - physical, emotional, social and spiritual - and it stops people from fulfilling their potential. World Vision is committed to fighting poverty through transformational development that is community-based, sustainable and focused on the wellbeing of children.

Our transformational development work aims to create lasting positive changes in poor communities by concentrating on these goals:

• Achieving childhood wellbeing, by enabling families and communities to ensure that children thrive and that they have access to healthcare, basic education, protection, spiritual and emotional nurture, and future opportunities. 
• Empowering children, so that together with their families and communities they can participate in decisions about the world in which they live.
• Building resilient communities, where people work together in community organisations to shape their surroundings, offset risks and decrease their vulnerabilities.
• Promoting just and peaceful relationships among individuals, families, households and communities, and a responsible relationship between people and the environment.
• Changing systems and policies at the local, regional, national and international level so that they address the structural causes of poverty.
• Influencing the values and lifestyles of World Vision supporters and sponsors, and the general public, so that we can work together to end global poverty and injustice.

Child sponsorship places children at the centre of this process of transformational development and it remains World Vision's principal method for achieving it.