SOS Children's Villages is an independent, non-governmental, nonprofit international development organization headquartered in Innsbruck, Austria. The organization provides humanitarian and developmental assistance to families facing difficulties and supports children and young people without parental care or at risk of losing it. The organization also protects their interests and rights around the world. Today, SOS Children's Villages is active in more than 130 countries and territories worldwide.
SOS Children's Villages provides quality care to children without adequate parental care. Children of different ages and background live together in a house with a full-time parent, usually a woman who serves as the children's parent. There are usually 6 to 15 houses in a typical SOS Village. In addition to the Villages, the organization also runs a whole range of programs and facilities to support socially disadvantaged and impoverished families through its subsidized kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, youth facilities, social and medical centers, and emergency response relief operations. In 2017, over 85,000 children and youths are raised in 572 SOS Children's Villages and over 700 SOS Youth Facilities. Another 3.8 million children and adults received services from their other programs.
SOS relies on contributions from governments and private donors. In 2017, the organization's 350 institutional partnership contracts totaled more than €31 million in institutional funds implemented. Funding from foundations and lotteries totaled nearly €48 million, and corporate partnerships provided more than €49 million in support for SOS Children's Villages globally. The organization was awarded the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2002, and the Princess of Asturias Award of Concord in 2016.
History
The Second World War resulted in many children becoming homeless and orphaned. Hermann Gmeiner (23 June 1919 – 26 April 1986), who himself participated in the war as an Austrian soldier, founded the first SOS Children's Village in Imst in the Austrian Federal State of Tyrol in 1949. Originally, the SOS Children's Village was established to look after the orphans of the Second World War. But later the organization eventually started looking after other children such as the abandoned, neglected, abused, and children in difficult economic circumstances.
In the second half of the 20th century, the organization spread all over Europe. In 1959, SOS Children's Village national associations were established in Italy, France, and Germany, and in the same year, the first SOS Youth Facility was founded in Innsbruck, Austria. The first mother of a Children's village was the Austrian Maria Weber (1919–2011). This first patron was the wife of a German Industrialist, Béatrice von Boch-Galhau (1914–2011). She financed the first SOS-children's village in Germany (Hilbringen / Saar) with her private assets and she used the political and business connections of her husband to promote the idea. As the organization grew, the umbrella organization SOS-Kinderdorf International was established to oversee all the national associations in the world in 1960. In the same year, the first SOS Children's Village in South America was founded in Uruguay. In 1963, the organization reached Asia with the first Villages established in North Korea and India. Seven years later, the organization founded Villages in Africa in the Republic of Ivory Coast, Kenya, Ghana, and Sierra Leone. In North America, the first Village was established in 1991 in the United States. Today, there are now more than 570 SOS Children's Villages present in 135 countries and territories.
In 2006, the "Colegio Internacional SOS Hermann Gmeiner," in Santa Ana, Costa Rica, re-opened as the United World College of Costa Rica, becoming the 11th United World College and the only UWC in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although no longer operating under the auspices of the SOS Children's Villages, the college continues to have a relationship with the organization, including a program of full scholarships for SOS Village students, with more than 50 SOS Village students having attended and graduated from the school.
Hermann Gmeiner was the SOS Children's Village president until 1985 when he was succeeded by Helmut Kutin. Helmut Kutin, born in 1941 in Bolzano, Italy, who was one of the first children admitted in SOS Austria, led the organization SOS Children's Villages International for 27 years after which in 2012, he was succeeded by Siddhartha Kaul, born in 1951 in Pilani, India.