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Like the kindergartens and vocational training centres, the SOS Schools extend, assist and continue the pedagogical support provided in the SOS Children's Villages and in the SOS Youth Facilities. Girl from Vientiane, Laos - Photo: A. Gabriel The commitment that SOS Children's Villages enters into by accepting a child is not limited to securing its existence and providing it with emotional stability, but also includes giving him or her the appropriate schooling to enable them to live independently as adults. The biographies of many children taken in by SOS Children's Villages show that social poverty or neglect, unalterable circumstances, war and conflict or disastrous living conditions prevented them from attending school. Sports training in open air in Surkhet, Nepal - Photo: A. Gabriel Since many of these children arrive not as infants but at the ages of seven, eight or nine, they frequently suffer from underdevelopment in their emotional, social and intellectual levels, a backlog that must first be laboriously made good. Without adequate schools close to the SOS Children's Villages, these already difficult conditions for a new start in life would be seriously impaired.  For the future of these children, and for all children from the SOS Children's Villages, the SOS Schools are of major importance in the communication of knowledge and the encouragement of talents and social skills. This applies also and in particular to children and young people from the neighbouring districts around the SOS Children's Villages. The majority of the school population at the SOS Schools consists of children and young people from the neighbourhood, a further encouragement to the integration of the SOS Children's Villages children and a reflection of the frequently high demand for educational facilities in the surrounding districts. Many of the schools operated by SOS Children's Villages act as social meeting points for the children from the children's villages and children from the neighbourhood, parents and teachers, staff and mothers. Joint competitions are held, sports events organised, information evenings arranged and a variety of social activities carried out. The school is a public place, becoming not only a centre for education but also a major instrument for the integration of all who attend it. Where school fees are charged, children from needy families can be exempted from fees or assisted with a scholarship. In addition, pupils are given one or two meals a day if required.