According to some estimates, there are 30 million refugees in the world, half of them under the age of 18. While the scale of the need can be paralyzing, Christians around the world refuse to sit idly by.

The ElShaddai Refugee Learning Center in Malaysia, a 2020 WORLD Magazine Hope Award Winner, educates and provides healthcare and skills training to more than 1,000 refugee children from 20 countries.

Under Malaysian law, refugee children cannot attend public schools or receive social services, so what ElShaddai provides is literally irreplaceable.

ElShaddai is Christian even though most of its students are Muslims. They are showing what loving our neighbor looks like at a time when, as WORLD puts it, “the United States and other Western countries accept fewer and fewer refugees.

Each year the WORLD Hope Awards celebrates examples of the Church just being the Church, at home and abroad.