Overview

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SOS Children's Village Itahari (Nepal) - Photo: A. Gabriel SOS Children's Villages are the main focus and point of departure for the organisation's global activities. Every SOS Children's Village offers a permanent home in a family-style environment to children who have lost their parents or can no longer live with them. Four to ten boys and girls of different ages live together with their SOS mother in a family house, and eight to fifteen SOS Children's Village families form a village community. In 1949, laid the foundation stone for the first SOS Children's Village in the small Tyrolean town of Imst (Austria). Shocked at the plight of so many children left orphaned and homeless after the Second World War, he pioneered a family approach to child care based on four principles. The goal at all SOS Children's Villages is to prepare and equip the children for an independent future. Each child receives education and training according to his or her needs, so that when the time comes to leave the SOS Children's Village, they are able to stand on their own two feet and achieve the goals of self-reliance, financial independence and social integration. The four principles of SOS Children's Villages The Mother: Each child has a caring parent The most important person for the children's personal development on the road to self-reliance is their SOS mother. She builds an emotional bond with each child entrusted to her care and provides the security they need. She is a child care professional and recognises and respects each child?s family background, cultural roots and religion. Brothers and sisters: Family ties are built Girls and boys of different ages live together as brothers and sisters. Siblings are not separated when they arrive at the village and live together in the same SOS family. These children, together with their SOS mother, build emotional ties that last a lifetime. The House: Each family creates its own home The house is the family's home, with its own unique feeling, rhythm and routine. Under its roof, children enjoy a real sense of security and belonging. Children grow and learn together, sharing responsibilities and the joys and sorrows of daily life. The Village: The SOS family is part of the community The SOS Children's Village is an integral part of the community in its location, design and every other aspect. SOS families are grouped together, enabling them to share experiences and offer one another a helping hand. Within this supportive environment children learn to trust and believe in others and themselves. SOS Children's Villages - Villages of Peace The basis of life in the community of an SOS Children's Village is peaceful co-existence - beyond all distinctions of ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. In many cases SOS Children's Villages are veritable melting pots for different ethnic groups and creeds: from the blacks and whites in South Africa or the Tamils and Singhalese in Sri Lanka, to the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. In every family house, the calls for tolerance and solidarity are presented and followed in the various facets of everyday life. The peaceful village community in turn has a model function for the neighbourhood. A child who knows peace today will be in a position to bring peace to others tomorrow. That constitutes a "multiplier effect for good" that is characteristic of the educational effort of SOS Children's Villages. In addition, SOS Children's Villages also provides active neighbourhood assistance. This includes a whole range of ancillary facilities such as kindergartens, schools, vocational training centres, counselling centres and clinics, mostly targeted at the needs of the young people and families living in the vicinity of the SOS Children's Village. In this way SOS Children's Villages help to improve the situation of what is often a large impoverished part of the local population.