Robert Pierce

Robert Pierce (1914–1978) was an American Baptist minister and relief worker. He is best known as the founder of the international charity organizations World Vision International in 1950 and Samaritan's Purse in 1970. Early life and education Pierce was born on October 8, 1914, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He moved with his family to southern California in the mid-1920s. He attended Pasadena Nazarene College and studied for the ministry. From 1937 to 1940 he spent time traveling across California working as an evangelist. In 1940 he was ordained a Baptist minister and soon thereafter he became involved with the Los Angeles branch of the WWII-era Youth for Christ (YFC) movement. Ministry During several visits in the late 1940s until the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1950, Robert Pierce worked with the Youth for Christ, in a series of evangelical rallies held in China and witnessed the wartime destruction of hospitals, schools, and churches. On one trip, he met Tena Hoelkeboer, a missionary teacher, who presented him with a battered and abandoned child. Unable to care for the child herself, Tena asked Pierce, "What are you going to do about her?" Pierce gave the woman his last five dollars and agreed to send the same amount each month to help the woman care for the child. He was deeply aroused by the wartime poverty and human suffering that he witnessed in both China and Korea and in 1950 he founded World Vision International, at least partly due to his associations with local pastors such as Korean Presbyterian minister Kyung-Chik Han.