The Short-Term Missions: Guidance to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children is a comprehensive resource that provides guidance and better practice standards for short-term missions to ensure positive outcomes for vulnerable children, their families, and their communities. This resource has been created for churches, mission agencies, faith-based organizations, donors, institutions of higher learning, and others who are interested in enhancing and supporting care for orphans and vulnerable children through sending or joining short-term mission teams. It encourages short-term missions to shift their focus from engaging with children in residential care centers to engagement in activities that support family-based care.
The Guidance is built on best practices in child protection, missiology, and cross-cultural engagement. In producing this resource, Faith to Action sought recommendations and input from more than 50 stakeholders—including, practitioners engaged in sending and receiving short-term missions, pastors, mission leaders, faith-based organizations, and academic leaders. Twenty-four organizations have endorsed the Guidance, including the Standards of Excellence (SOE) in Short-Term Mission (see complete list below).
