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SOS Children's Village in Mar del Plata, Argentina

SOS Children's Villages is 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.

The organization's work focuses on abandoned, destitute and orphaned children requiring family-based child care. Millions of children worldwide are living without their biological families for a variety of reasons including:

• parental separation,
• domestic violence and neglect
• they have lost their parents due to war or natural catastrophes
• disease - including increasingly AIDS.

Such children are supported to recover from being emotionally traumatised and to avoid real danger of being isolated, abused, exploited and deprived of their rights.

SOS provides about 50 000 such children and 15 000 young adults with a permanent new family, with a '24 hours a day' new SOS mother to provide family-based care. Typically (in the developing world) about ten children are grouped into a house with an SOS mother and between ten and forty of such houses are grouped together as a "Village" with shared facilities. Families groups once formed are kept together as a priority.

... from my point of view, nothing in the world is more important that careful and protect a child." Hermann Gmeiner (1919-1986).

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 also supports about a million (source: [1]) other children in community programmes such as family strengthening, running 192 schools across the developing world, running medical centres and programmes for street children, child soldiers and victims of disaster.

Prominent supporters include Nelson Mandela, FIFA, the Dalai Lama, Andriy Shevchenko, 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.

• SOS Children's Villages - International (umbrella organisation)
• SOS Children's Villages of Pakistan
• SOS Children's Villages - USA
• SOS Children's Villages - UK
• SOS Children's Villages Canada
• SOS Children's Village South Africa
• SOS Children's Wikipedia Collection

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