Chittagong

Country information

The SOS Children's Village Chittagong was built on an area of 1.5 hectares in the middle of Chittagong, only 5 minutes from the city centre. It consists of 12 family houses, a Village Director's house and a building with apartments for the personnel. The administration and study rooms are in the Community Centre. There is also a Kindergarten and a workshop. The SOS Social Centre, which offers medical care and a soup kitchen for the poor, is of great importance to the surrounding slum areas. The SOS Social Centre also runs a day-care centre for 50 children of working mothers and a training centre where women from the neighbourhood can acquire useful skills, such as sewing and embroidery. An SOS School was installed on the first floor of this building, which has also been adapted as a cyclone shelter after the devastating storms in the spring of 1991. Another two-storey building, which serves as a mosque and at the same time as a shelter to the very poor population of the neighbourhood, was erected at the village of Bashkali near Chittagong. In 1994, an SOS Youth Village and an SOS Vocational Training Centre were added to the SOS facilities in Chittagong.