Samaritan's Purse
Samaritan's Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to people in physical need as a key part of its Christian missionary work. The organization's president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. The name of the organization is derived from the New Testament Parable of the Good Samaritan. With international headquarters in Boone, United States, the organization also maintains warehouse and aviation facilities in nearby North Wilkesboro and Greensboro, North Carolina.
History
Samaritan's Purse was founded in 1970 by Baptist pastor Robert Pierce, the founder of World Vision International, in Hollywood, California, and was relocated to Boone, North Carolina by Franklin Graham in 1980.Franklin Graham met Pierce in 1973, and they made several trips together to visit relief projects and missionary partners in Asia and elsewhere. Graham became president of Samaritan's Purse in 1979, following Pierce's death the prior year.
By 2022, Samaritan's Purse had offices in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Korea. Beyond the offices in those six countries, Samaritan’s Purse also has field offices in 15 countries as of August 2025. The organization provides assistance in more than 100 countries. It operates worldwide as Samaritan's Purse, Ippan Shadan Houjin in Japan and as the Emmanuel Group, a wholly owned aircraft title holding corporation formed in 2004.
Programs
Samaritan's Purse includes several ongoing ministries.- North American Ministries responds to emergency situations in North America.
- * Operation Heal Our Patriots provides lodging and outdoor activities in Alaska for wounded veterans and their spouses. It is a sub-ministry of NAM.
- International Projects responds to emergency situations around the world.
- World Medical Mission , the medical arm of Samaritan's Purse, was founded in 1977 by brothers Dr. Richard Furman and Dr. Lowell Furman to enable doctors to serve short-term assignments at overwhelmed missionary hospitals.
- Children's Heart Project provides surgery for children born with heart defects in countries where proper care is not available.
- Operation Christmas Child.
Operation Christmas Child
In 1994, a pioneering figure of the program, Mary Damron, collected 1,256 shoeboxes from family and neighbors in her impoverished community of Wyoming County, West Virginia. Damron was one of the first major collectors of shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, and soon became an ambassador and missionary for the program. She traveled to over 40 countries during her time as a missionary with Samaritan's Purse. Damron died in December 2024, aged 70.
In November 2022, the organization reached a milestone by distributing its 200 millionth Christmas shoebox.
Elizabeth Groff, who was born in Ukraine and adopted by an American family in 2007, delivered the 200 millionth shoebox gift to a child in Ukraine.
The program uses "follow-up" evangelism with pamphlets of Bible stories that are given to families that receive the boxes.
The follow-up evangelism program of Operation Christmas Child is called "The Greatest Journey". It is a 12-week discipleship program for children who receive shoebox gifts.
U.S. disaster relief
Samaritan's Purse launched a large civilian airlift operation to relieve those affected by Hurricane Helene. The organization completed 358 missions. 35,000 volunteers participated in cleaning the affected areas from mud, trees, and debris. In November 2024, Samaritan's Purse announced the launch of its new Hurricane Helene Rebuild Program. In May 2025, Franklin Graham started welcoming the first families into their new homes, which were provided free-of-charge and fully furnished.Emergency aid
The organization's medical mission in Liberia, West Africa, was one of only two medical NGOs active in Liberia during the beginning of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA both have been actively engaged in treating the outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Liberia. On August 1, 2014, the organization announced that it was evacuating 60 nonessential personnel from Liberia. Dr. Kent Brantly, a Texas-based doctor working for the organization, was the first U.S. citizen to contract the Ebola virus in Liberia while treating the disease. He arrived in the United States on Saturday, August 2, and was treated and subsequently released after nearly three weeks in a special isolation unit of Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. The organization recorded their mission in Liberia in the documentary Facing Darkness. Samaritan's Purse has a fleet of 24 aircraft for the emergency transport of basic necessities and aid workers.The organization launched hygiene and public awareness campaigns about prevention and diagnosis and airlifted nearly 200 tons of relief supplies to the country. Samaritan’s Purse also responded to the large Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018. During that crisis, the organization set up a 56-bed emergency field hospital in Komanda where teams of Samaritan’s Purse doctors and nurses treated nearly 600 patients who were in desperate need of care.
Ukraine aid
According to the Ukrainian government, Samaritan's Purse has been operating in Ukraine through Operation Christmas Child since 1996. Samaritan’s Purse began its full response in Ukraine in February 2022 when Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Since the start of the war, the organization, both directly and through local partners, has been delivering food, water, warm clothing, shelter, winter heating solutions and medical assistance. More than 10 million Ukrainians have benefited from this aid. The organization has established cooperation with 2,000 Ukrainian partners.The organization stepped efforts to aid Ukraine in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The first mission staff arrived in Ukraine in February 2022. During the initial phase of the war, a DC-8 aircraft transported up to 84,000 pounds of aid, which was then delivered to Ukraine through Poland. The organization's warehouse in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, was used for the aid distribution. By December 2022, the organization had distributed 100 million pounds of food to those affected by the war in Ukraine. The organization's aircraft was also used for evacuating Ukrainian refugees. In May 2022, 28 Ukrainians were flown to Canada.
The organization donated various supplies especially for the youth in schools such as medication, food, supplies, blankets, tarps, and bags. The donations were made through various methods of transportation such as semi trucks being loaded with roughly 80,000 donation goods, being transferred at Piedmont Triad International Airport on the DC-8 airplane, and then being air lifted to Poland where the goods are transported across the border to Ukraine. The organization accomplished its 30th airlift donation in the month of September having started in February, equating to roughly 4 airlifts per month. It is estimated that 5.5 million Ukrainians were aided due to the efforts with food, water, and supplies. Furthermore, the organization provided roughly 30 emergency field support hospitals in Lviv with the result of aiding nearly 18,000 patients.
The deployment of the emergency field hospital in Ukraine began on March 3, 2022. The hospital was located in an underground parking lot of a shopping centre in Lviv. In September 2022, it was reported that the organization supported 30 medical facilities across Ukraine. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Health, more than 33,700 outpatient consultations were provided and over 260 surgeries were performed in the field hospitals set up with Samaritan's Purse support. Additionally, 253 metric tons of medical supplies were delivered to 164 medical facilities in Ukraine.In December 2022, generators were provided for hospitals in the Kherson region, as well as for the so-called points of invincibility across the region. Samaritan’s Purse also trained 18,000 local Ukrainian medical professionals.
To further support Ukraine, in March 2023, Samaritan's Purse and its Ukrainian subsidiary, the Samaritan's Purse Ukraine Charitable Foundation, signed a five-party memorandum of understanding and cooperation with Ukrainian government structures, including the Ministry of Social Policy, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories.