The driving force behind all of Concern Worldwide’s operations is a commitment to eliminating extreme poverty. Our role is to ensure that the poorest people are able to meet their basic needs, achieve their rights, and manage their own development. Concern works in 28 of the poorest countries in the world, targeting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, with a significant focus on women and children. In all our work, Concern's aim is to promote equality, especially in relation to gender, in our programs at home and overseas, believing that women's empowerment and equality between men and women are prerequisites to poverty elimination. Our work is directly linked to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight goals adopted by 189 nations to reduce poverty around the world by the year 2015.
Concern’s dual priorities in our overseas programs are emergency responses, which are time-bound attempts to address the consequences of disasters and development interventions, which aim to deliver sustainable solutions to extreme poverty.
In countries susceptible to disaster, Concern believes that disaster risk reduction is an integral part of development and we include such interventions in many of the countries in which we work.
Concern’s programs are primarily focused on the following five critical sectors: