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SOS Children's Villages in brief
SOS Children's Village Association of Zimbabwe
September 17, 2002

SOS Children's Villages is a private child welfare organisation which provides long-term family-based care for orphaned and destitute children. The first SOS Children's Village was established in the small Austrian town of Imst in 1949 by Hermann Gmeiner.

The Second World War had left thousands of children orphaned, homeless and traumatised. Many of them found themselves in overcrowded orphanages, separated from their brothers and sisters and grouped according to age and gender. Convinced that a family environment would give these children a better foundation on which to build their lives, Gmeiner, a medical student, challenged traditional methods of orphan care and pioneered a family-based approach.

His concept was - and continues to be - based on four principles: each child needs a caring mother or parent, who builds a close relationship with each individual child. The children grow up with girls and boys of different ages as brothers and sisters in their own family house in a supportive village environment. Siblings are not separated and the village provides additional professional care, education and a village community to prepare the children for a self-reliant future.

The SOS Children's Village idea rapidly spread, transcending borders of politics, religion and culture. Demand increased for additional facilities to help young people integrate into society and to meet the needs of deprived families in neighbouring communities. By the 1970s, youth facilities, kindergartens, schools, medical centres, social centres, vocational training centres and emergency relief programmes had been established.

Today SOS Children's Villages is active in 131 countries and territories. 439 SOS Children's Villages and 300 SOS Youth Facilities provide a home to more than 50,000 children and youth in need. In addition, more than 800 supporting facilities share in the development of local communities. Over 110,000 children and young people attend SOS Kindergartens, SOS Hermann Gmeiner Schools (primary and secondary schools, international colleges) and SOS Vocational Training Centres. More than 300,000 people benefit from the services at SOS Medical Centres (hospitals, out-patient clinics) and some 50,000 make use of services provided by the SOS Social Centres (day-care facilities, training courses for women, community development projects).

Although the number of orphaned children is decreasing in many countries, there are more and more children who cannot live with their parents for a variety of reasons. SOS Children's Villages continues to develop child-care approaches to respond to the ever-changing needs of societies. Providing specialised family-based care for children who have nobody else to turn to remains the priority.

A new focus is on developing new community-based programmes to prevent child abandonment, which threatens millions of children particularly in the least developed countries. By strengthening existing families, these programmes aim to enable children at risk to grow up within the protective environment of their own home.

Furthermore, SOS Children's Villages in southern and eastern Africa have adapted their range of support to meet the needs of HIV/AIDS-affected communities and young persons at risk of contracting the disease. This includes support to child-headed and grandparent-headed families, counselling, HIV/AIDS prevention, life skills training and implementation of income-generating activities.

Visit the SOS Children's Village Association of Zimbabwe fact sheet

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