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Our Principles

Every child lives with a mother in a family house. The mother provides the security, love and stability that each child needs.

The Mother: Each child has a caring parent

The most important person for the children's personal development on the road to self-reliance is their SOS mother. She builds an emotional bond with each child entrusted to her care and provides the security they need. She is a child care professional and recognises and respects each child's family background, cultural roots and religion.

All the children live in family houses so they can grow in a family atmosphere filled with love, security and comfort.

The House : Each family creates its own home

All the children live in family houses so they can grow in a family atmosphere filled with love, security and comfort.

The Village : The SOS family is part of the community

Through his or her family, village and community, each child learns to participate in society.

SOS Children's Villages - Villages of Peace

The basis of life in the community of an SOS Children's Village is peaceful co-existence - beyond all distinctions of ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. In many cases SOS Children's Villages are veritable melting pots for different ethnic groups and creeds: from the blacks and whites in South Africa or the Tamils and Singhalese in Sri Lanka, to the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.

In every family house, the calls for tolerance and solidarity are presented and followed in the various facets of everyday life. The peaceful village community in turn has a model function for the neighbourhood. A child who knows peace today will be in a position to bring peace to others tomorrow. That constitutes a "multiplier effect for good" that is characteristic of the educational effort of SOS Children's Villages.

In addition, SOS Children's Villages also provides active neighbourhood assistance. This includes a whole range of ancillary facilities such as kindergartens, schools, vocational training centres, counselling centres and clinics, mostly targeted at the needs of the young people and families living in the vicinity of the SOS Children's Village. In this way SOS Children's Villages help to improve the situation of what is often a large impoverished part of the local population.