World Vision Study Measures Children’s Experience of God’s Love
The Christian humanitarian organization World Vision is launching the Measuring the Experience of God’s Love in Children (Hope & Love Measure) study designed to understand how children experience and understand the love of God.
The research was developed by World Vision in collaboration with theologians, psychologists and researchers from Harvard University, Duke University and Claremont Graduate University. Interviews were conducted with more than 600 children across Albania, Bolivia, Iraq, Lesotho, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Uganda. The project establishes that children are not passive recipients of care but active participants in their communities, and moral and spiritual beings whose capacity to feel loved and hopeful is foundational to their well-being.
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The six signs of hope are:
- Compassion: A hopeful child is compassionate and aware of the needs of others, seeks to show kindness and appreciates when people show compassion to them.
- Purpose: A hopeful child is expressive and an active agent in community life, constantly learning and pursuing their dreams and aspirations.
- Resilience: A hopeful child has both the inner strength and the capacity to draw strength from relationships, to face life challenges with courage. They learn and grow stronger from experience.
- Joy: A hopeful child feels joy in simple experiences and has a grateful heart, which allows them to celebrate the kindness of others.
- Wisdom: A hopeful child understands that they have value as a person, reflects on what they are learning through life experiences, sees the wisdom in demonstrating strong character and tries to act accordingly.
- Personal faith: A hopeful child trusts in God, has a relationship with Jesus, sees the work of the Holy Spirit and finds meaning in spiritual practices and rituals.
“World Vision has known for decades that experiencing the love of Jesus makes a meaningful difference in the lives of the children, even in places where it’s toughest to be a child,” President and CEO Edgar Sandoval Sr. said. “The Hope & Love Measure scientifically validates this belief, showing that as children experience God’s unconditional love through caring family and community relationships, there are measurable signs of hope, resilience and long-term well-being. These signs can then help World Vision, schools and church partners develop ways to increase that hope within vulnerable children through programs and services that ultimately strengthen families and communities.”
-Dwight Widaman
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