The LWF World Service report 2024 provides an insight into the scale and impact of our humanitarian and development work around the world in 2024 and over the last strategic period (2019-2024). It also introduces the new Strategy (2025-2031), which retains the previous motto, For Hope and a Future. 

The 2024 Annual Report edition is presented in a more concise 16-page format, while still capturing key highlights and achievements of the year. It showcases selected achievements across the three LWF World Service Programmatic Areas and in humanitarian response, using short stories and testimonies from the people we work with. It also provides a summary of our outreach, staff statistics, financial status and the partners with whom we collaborated in 2024 to deliver our 75-year-long mandate as the humanitarian and development arm of the LWF. 

Delivering with local expertise

During the last strategic period (2019-2024), LWF World Service cumulatively supported more than 16 million people to live in dignity and shape their own futures. 2.5milion were supported in 2024 alone, with a staff team of about 6600, most of them based in the communities and countries we operate in. 

“Notably, more than half of our staff are refugees and over 99% are based in the countries where we operate. Local expertise is the foundation of our responses.” 

— Maria Immonen, Director, LWF World Service

Shift towards humanitarian response

Over the years, LWF World Service' work has increasingly shifted from long-term development programming towards emergency humanitarian response, reflecting the rising number of crises and growing global needs. Refugees, internally displaced people, and host communities remain at the centre of our work across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Europe.

Rights-based approach

The 2024 report affirms our continued commitment to human rights and the rights-based approach, particularly of women and girl’s empowerment. It features the Sudanese crisis, one of the world's most under-funded crises. LWF World Service is responding to the Sudanese crisis in Chad, South Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia, providing life-saving assistance, creating livelihood opportunities, supporting protection and access to essential services, including education, water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and health.

Many of the images in the report reflect how LWF World Service continues to place the people at the center of its work, and presence in the places where support is most needed.