Because every person matters: Dorcas annual report 2025

In 2025, Dorcas celebrated 45 years of standing alongside people in need across Eastern Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Our annual report 2025 tells that story: one person, one family, one community at a time.

William, a pastor and farmer in rural Tanzania, knows what it means to stand alongside people. Before he joined a Dorcas project, his family could barely make ends meet. Through training and support, he diversified his crops, improved his livestock and transformed his small plot into a thriving farm. His wife Elizabeth puts it simply: ‘I can choose what we eat from our own farm, and we can sell the rest.’ William now trains other farmers in his village.

His story of hope is just one of the many our projects made possible in 2025. In Lebanon and Syria, children learned in safe spaces with full stomachs. Roma children in Ukraine found hope through sport and psychosocial support. In Iraq, farmers facing drought and shrinking water sources strengthened their food security through climate-smart agriculture and water-efficient farming. And in Tanzania, Lucia received fruit trees and training, used her first harvest income to buy chickens, and built a chain of growth entirely by herself.

Our commitment to the one person in need goes all the way back to where Dorcas began. In a special interview, our founder, Dirk-Jan Groot, and his wife, Janneke, share what first moved them to act 45 years ago. And today, a whole community continues in the path they set out on: donors, churches, volunteers, businesses, Dorcas shop customers and local partners all play a role in making our work possible.

Forty-five years on, the conviction that Dirk-Jan and Janneke carried from the outset still drives everything we do: we can make a difference for that one person in need. Read our annual report to find out how we did that in 2025.