SOS Children's Villages
From Free net encyclopedia
SOS Children's Villagesis an independent, non-governmental international development organisation which has been working to meet the needs and protect the interests and rights of children since 1949. It was founded by Hermann Gmeiner in Imst, Austria.
Abandoned, destitute and orphaned children requiring family-based child care and disadvantaged families are in the focus of the organisation's work. Millions of children worldwide are living without their biological families for a variety of reasons including parental separation, domestic violence and neglect; or because they have lost their parents due to war, natural catastrophes or disease - including increasingly AIDS. Such children need support to recover from being emotionally traumatised and to avoid real danger of being isolated, abused, exploited and deprived of their rights.
Those children who cannot remain with their biological families nevertheless have a right to family care, protection and a fair chance in life. SOS is rather unusual is providing such children with a permanent new family, with a 24 hours a day new SOS mother to provide family-based care. With their family-based form of child care, SOS Children's Villages enable abandoned and orphaned children to once more become rooted within a family.
Children are admitted to an SOS Children's Village if they cannot - or are unlikely to - return to their biological families. In many cases, it is also possible to work on a preventive basis, so that families learn to cope with crises which might otherwise lead to separation from their children. SOS has major programmes strengthening families (such as child-led families where parents have died of HIV/AIDS) to maintain them as a unit.
In addition to the SOS Children's Villages (over 450 worldwide) that form the core of SOS Children's Villages' work, the organisation runs a whole range of programmes and facilities in support of socially disadvantaged and impoverished families to help them lead a better life in the long-term.
SOS Children's Villages are now home to some 60,000 children and adolescents on all continents. Hundreds of thousands of people benefit from more than 1,200 educational, social, medical and emergency relief programmes.
Prominent supporters include Nelson Mandela, FIFA, the Dalai Lama, French writer & actress Anny Dupérey, Sarah Ferguson, Princess Salimah Aga Khan and Johnny Cash whose memorial fund is towards the work of SOS Children's Villages worldwide.