10/27/14

Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa

"Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."

Its words like these that the members of the SOS Children's Village International take to their hearts and try to make a difference in deprived children's lives. Their main purpose is to ensure that every child is raised in a home that gives love, respect and security.

To do so, the organization has different projects to support the families that are unable to care enough for their children.
There is a long-term project where children are given a home in a SOS family and live there until they are old enough to look after themselves. The short-term project is the so called "Family Strengthening". In this case SOS Children's Village assists struggling families so they can stay together. Moreover it provides material needed for education and childcare for them. Statistics show that 56 percent of those families achieve self-reliance again after being involved in a family strengthening program.

However, besides the project mentioned before, SOS Children's Village also works in currently problematic regions, if there is a war or a disease for example. They support them with care packages, containing household supplies, blankets and more.
Accordingly, a recent project focuses also on battling Ebola. Donations from SOS member associations in Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands made it possible to sponsor new sets of "full-body Personal Protective Equipment" (PPE) to medical workers in Monrovia, Liberia.

Another project of the SOS Children's Village helps orphaned and displaced children in Syria to get better school education again since as the war began in 2011 the number of children going to school declined to just 50 percent.

SOS Children's Village is active in 134 countries, and the latest numbers from 2013 state that there are over 82,000 children world wide growing up in SOS Children's Village homes and additional 328,700 individuals that take advantage of family strengthening programs.

In my opinion this kind of charity seems to really succeed for one thing because there are always people intending to adopt or take care for a child which is not their own. For another thing I hold the view that the concept of supporting poor families without ripping them apart is a great opportunity for those people.

Furthermore, there are many ways to contribute to one of the projects. You do not have to adopt a child to make a difference. In fact you can make a sponsorship, where you pay a monthly amount of money for a child somewhere in a SOS Children's Village home. Otherwise you can also start with making only one single donation. The children from today are our future; this is why I think it is important to provide them good education in a loving family so that their roots cannot define their chances in life. It is in our hands to make this planet a little fairer for everyone that lives on it.