Operational Principles

VI operates according to certain principles as summarized in the following section.

Declaration of Faith

VI is based on Christian morals and faith. By this we mean that we love and serve others because: 1) We are called to; 2) We sincerely desire to empower the impoverished; and, 3) We bring glory to God by doing so. Evangelism is not our motivation; however, staff and board members are permitted to share openly and honestly their beliefs.

Participation For All

VI is an interfaith organization; however, we seek to be clear in that we do grass-roots development work only. We welcome anyone of any denomination or faith who seeks to support this kind of development.

Participation in our projects is not dependent on a person’s faith. As Christ has called us to love and serve all people, so our work will not discriminate between Christians and non-Christians.

Dignity of Human Life

God calls us to respect human life as individually worthy of dignity. We seek to treat everyone we serve with love and respect as if we were loving and serving God, and we will strive to maintain the dignity of the impoverished when presenting information about them to the public.

Sources of Funding

VI will solicit donations from individuals and organizations that care about the impoverished and want to help. VI does not solicit funds from the government except for the purpose of research. The U.S. and other 1st world countries have aid programs that use tax dollars to run large development projects around the world. While these programs do much good, political agendas and purposes always seem to determine where the tax dollars and efforts go.

Decentralized Network

VI is a non-bureaucratic, decentralized entity created for the purpose of supporting and doing development work. Maintaining such a network of people generally requires little administrative cost; however, being aware of the danger of too little supervision, VI will not split its resources to the point of losing its effectiveness. Real work will be accomplished as cooperation, not separation, characterizes its daily operation.

This type of decentralization is an achievable goal in today's world with its greater communication capabilities. We envision being able to use internet and email technology to relay important information about each project including project proposals, comments and discussions, project status reports, measurements of project success, and project summary reports. VI will also be able to help field staff connect with each other through the VI website for communication of struggles, subsequent discussions of solutions, and mutual encouragement and support.

In addition, VI seeks to bring together people and ideas in an honest, open way with financial and organizational transparency. Supporters of VI will know with certainty where their support is going. This will provide accountability for field staff to their supporters.