SOS began as a vision of Hermann Gmeiner in 1949 to establish family-based homes for orphaned children. The first SOS Children's Village opened in Imst, Austria. By the 1950s, additional villages were established across Europe, including the first outside of Austria in France and Germany in 1956. Over subsequent decades, SOS expanded further across Europe and also began establishing villages in Asia and Africa to serve increasing numbers of orphaned and abandoned children globally.

1. PAGE 8
1200 G Street NW, Suite 550
Washington, DC 2000
toll free 888-SOS-4KIDS
www.SOS-USA.org
info@SOS-USA.org
SOS in the 21st century
In 2002, SOS joined the
other recipients such as
Doctors without Borders,
International Rescue Com-
mittee and Operation Smile
as the recipient of the Con-
rad N. Hilton Humanitarian
Prize— an award that hon-
ors charitable organizations
that have made “extraordi-
nary contributions toward
alleviating human suffering.”
1million friends
for the future
E
mbarking on its 60th year of
serving orphaned and aban-
doned children, SOS con-
cluded a 5-year global stra-
tegic plan that focused on eight initia-
tives. Based on its success, SOS has
even more ambitious targets for the
future. By 2016, one million friends
of SOS will support one million
children. SOS will be raising 100,000
children in SOS Villages and ensur-
ing children are raised properly in
900,000 vulnerable families through
family strengthening programs aimed
at preventing child abandonment.
Working to Protect Child Rights
Part of this effort to ensure chil-
dren are not abandoned is an advo-
cacy campaign to promote a child’s
right to a family and to be protected
from abuse and exploitation. Child
protection guidelines are already be-
ing implemented in our Villages and
in our community programs. Howev-
er, the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child, ratified by nearly all na-
tions in the world, stands in stark con-
trast to reality. The current living con-
ditions and prospects for the future of
the world’s children cannot be suffi-
ciently illustrated just with numbers:
in industrial countries, 3,500 died
every year due to abuse and neglect.
233 million children worldwide are
victims of sexual abuse. Physical pun-
ishment is explicitly forbidden in only
16 countries. Millions of children are
forced to work, are victims of child
trafficking, war and forced displace-
ment and suffer from diseases that
could be easily treated.
The caregivers of SOS Children’s
Villages are confronted with the con-
sequences of these massive breaches
of children’s rights on a daily basis.
We hope that our friends, donors and
sponsors will continue to support
child rights to ensure that every child
grows up in a loving home.
Humanitarian Prize
Target Result
1 80,000 children and young people in long-term
family-based care
Over 75,000 children
2 100,000 children and young people benefit
from family strengthening programs
Over 162,000 beneficiaries
3 50% increase growth of global fundraising 53% growth
4 30% of the national associations build
partnerships advocating child rights
40% are actively taking part
5 External recognition of the SOS family child
care model in 30% of the countries
66% of all national associations achieved
this goal
6 40 countries step forward on a 4-step
scale for strong and locally rooted associations
28 took a significant step
7 Research and evaluation to be carried
out in 56 coutnries
Completed by 56 countries
8 Ongoing personnel development and more
skills for leaders
HR development measures implemented
by 80% of the countries
tsunami:
after the
disaster
During the first few days follow-
ing the disaster on December
26, 2004 — a day that will forever be
remembered in people’s minds as the
day of the “Tsunami,” were particu-
larly exceptional. It is estimated that
in 11 countries, 230,000 people —
many children — died in this storm.
Staff from SOS Children’s Villages
reacted swiftly and spontaneously, or-
ganizing relief where and in whatever
shape or form it was needed. We had
the advantage of already being active
on the ground in India, Sri, Lanka,
Indonesia, and Thailand. The great-
est problems faced were the scale of
the disaster, the infrastructure that had
been completely destroyed in many
areas, the lack of coordination, the
large distances, changing laws and a
precarious security situation in some
places.
Over several months, we reached
out to 23,000 people from the south-
west coast of Sri Lanka to Banda
Aceh on the Indonesian island of Su-
2002 SOS awarded the
Conrad N. Hilton
Humanitarian Prize
2004 Following the Tsunami in
Asia, SOS builds more than
2,232 family houses
2009 60th anniversary; there are 499
SOS Children’s Villages serving
over 73,000 children
With 2008 goals
achieved, SOS
launches a new
strategic plan.
matra. Trauma centers were set up for
children, as were nurseries to relieve
parents. Emergency relief packages,
clothes, medication and school mate-
rials were distributed, start-up money
was provided, and over 340 fishing
boats were made available. But, it was
clear once organized, that emergency
relief efforts were to have a long-term
impact so that people would be in a
position to manage their lives in the
future without external aid. This was
the largest and most comprehensive
reconstruction project SOS had ever
embarked on and was a real success
for the child-care organization spe-
cializing in family-based care for
children.
With over $62 million over a peri-
od of 3 years, SOS constructed 2,232
family houses for over 11,000 peopple
in 15 communities; built 18 multi-
purpose community centers; built six
entirely new SOS Children’s Villages
in four countries; and started eight
family strengthening programs. SOS
Children’s Villages’ construction ef-
forts were ranked among the best of 35
organizations working in Indonesia in
a published study by the UN in 2006.
Conrad N. Hilton
Humantitarian Prize
2003-2008StrategicInitiatives
VILLAGEVOICES 1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION
timeline
SOS Tsunami Child Relief Center
Kanyakumari, India
SOS Delivers on its Promises
n
o
a
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2. 499
ing
N
B
orn into a large Austrian farm family in 1919,
Gmeiner experienced the horrors of World
War II as a soldier in Russia. As a child welfare
worker after the war, he witnessed the isolation
and suffering of thousands of war orphans and homeless
children. He saw appalling conditions in orphanages and
destitute children everywhere and he was deeply affected.
Gmeiner experienced firsthand the pain of losing his moth-
er when he was a young boy, and knew the void it left in his
life. This personal experience of great loss drove a vision
that would guide him for a lifetime. He became convinced
that having a caring mother to provide security, love, and
stability was crucial for the healthy development of chil-
dren, especially war orphans. SOS mothers and the homes
and community they could provide would fill an emotional
void for children who had lost any semblance of love and
belonging. With just a few shillings in his pocket, he estab-
lished the first SOS Children’s Village Association in 1949.
That same year, the foundation stone was laid for the first
SOS Children’s Village in the town of Imst, 30 miles from
Austria’s Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck.
Perched on a hill above the small alpine town, the Imst
Village was started with small donations, and a great deal
of enthusiasm from individual citizens, especially as they
suffered themselves in war-torn cities and devastating pov-
erty. In the 1950s this single Village became the spring-
board for developing the worldwide network of nearly 500
SOS Children’s Villages that we know today. Gmeiner had
been planning to become a doctor, but his burning passion
for saving more children took precedence, and he aban-
doned his medical studies. He served as the first Village
Director in Imst and arranged for construction of further
Villages in Austria and many other countries across Eu-
rope. He died in 1986 and is buried at SOS Imst Village,
VILLAGEVOICES
1949 Opening of the first SOS Children’s
Villages in Imst, Austria
key years in
SOS history
the early days
1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Expansion
into Asia
Into Africa Moving into
North America
The 21st
Century
3 5 7 8
Clockwise from above: Hermann
Gmeiner at the corner stone
ceremony of SOS Children’s
Village (CV) Austria; Hermann
Gmeiner with family in SOS CV,
Austria; Portrait of Hermann
Gmeiner
Scrabble
Originally called Criss Cross
Words. In the first year it was
sold, it lost $450 dollars, but
slowly the gains increased and
Scrabble is ranked the second
best-selling game in history.
1949
Great ideas often start with the vision
of one person. For SOS, that person
was Hermann Gmeiner.
New for the 1940s
PAGE 1
but his legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of millions
around the world whose lives have been changed by his
vision.
The Legacy Lives On ...
A similar family tragedy inspired Helmut Kutin, today’s
president of SOS-Kinderdorf International, to become
Gmeiner’s successor. Kutin moved to SOS Imst in 1953 at
the age of twelve. His eldest sister had been murdered, his
mother had died shortly thereafter, and he was no longer
able to care for his ill father. His SOS mother Antonia raised
Kutin like one of her own. “What impressed me most about
her,” says Kutin, “was that she always tried to be equally
fair to each of us, to be the same mother to us all.” He re-
calls a “wonderful childhood” at SOS Children’s Village in
Imst, years that “even today are still a source of strength
and optimism for me in my daily work.” That work, reflect-
ing Hermann Gmeiner’s vision, revolves around the prin-
ciples that having a loving mother, siblings, a home, and a
supportive community gives a child a place to belong and
makes one feel safe and wanted. This kind of foundation is
what enables children to become successful adults.
the SOS logo
now stands for the world’s largest
organization dedicated to orphaned
and abandoned children THE LINE
stands for stability and
reliability
THE FRAME
stands for protection
and security
THE TREE
stands for growth
and hope
THE GIRL AND BOY
stand for siblings,
community and
belonging
timeline
VILLAGEVOICES 1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Make a $100 donation
and receive the limited
edition Hermann Gmeiner
biography
A_43481.indd 2 4/30/09 1:31 PM

3. timeline
VILLAGEVOICESPAGE 2
SOS in europe
moving across
europe
1956
Not long after seeing his dream come
to fruition in Austria, Hermann Gmeiner
set his sites on giving orphans a home
across Europe.
I
n 1953, a newspaper article about
Gmeiner inspired a young French
teacher named Gilbert Cotteau
to visit the Austrian founder of
the SOS Children’s Village in Imst.
In 1956, standing side by side the two
visionaries watched construction offi-
cially begin for the Village d’Enfants
SOS de Busigny, in northern France.
SOS’s Village at Busigny became the
first outside of Austria. It sits sixty
miles east of Amiens, surrounded by
fields and woods and today houses
sixty children.
Gmeiner’s vision to provide lov-
ing homes to children reached Ger-
many through Jurgen Froelich, the
first CEO of the German SOS Chil-
dren’s Village Association who dedi-
cated 50 years of his life to SOS. That
nation’s first SOS Children’s Village
opened in 1956 in Diessen, a beauti-
ful lake town twenty miles from Mu-
nich. SOS Europe soon spread. Italy
opened its first SOS Village in 1963.
Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Bel-
gium, and Spain broke ground for
their own SOS Villages in the 1960s
and 1970s. At the same time, associa-
tions to raise funds and gain public-
ity for SOS Villages around the world
were born in Denmark, Switzerland,
Norway, and Great Britain.
Spread to Eastern Bloc
SOS work did not go unchal-
lenged, especially in the Eastern Bloc.
SOS Children’s Villages set up a fa-
cility in Czechoslovakia as early as
1970, but faced obstacles to its work
because of the political climate at the
time. However, a Village was opened
in Poland in 1983 and another in Hun-
gary in 1986. The Soviet Union’s col-
lapse in 1991 paved the way for more
SOS Villages in Eastern Europe — in
Bulgaria and Romania (1993), Esto-
nia (1994), and in Albania, Lithuania,
Russia, and Belarus (1995). SOS tries
to open Villages in areas where con-
ditions for children are most dire. The
Belarusian Village in Minsk was built
to help children suffering from medi-
cal conditions due to the Chernobyl
disaster.
Violent events in the former Yugo-
slavia presented one of SOS’s greatest
challenges in Europe. SOS Children’s
Villages was one of the few aid orga-
nizations that was active in the coun-
try during the series of bitter ethnic
Balkan conflicts that took place from
1991 to 2001. SOS facilities are now
thriving in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Kosovo, Serbia, and Croatia.
France and Germany, sites of the
first SOS Villages outside of Gmein-
er’s Austria, today host a wide SOS
network that even extends beyond
Europe. SOS Children’s Villages op-
erates in twelve locations in France
and one in French Polynesia, and
serves 600 children and youth. SOS
France also supports twenty-five Vil-
lages caring for 4,900 children out-
side of France—in Morocco, Camer-
oon, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and
Mali. Germany is now home to fifteen
Children’s Villages, including nine in
(former) East German cities.
To SOS mother Constanze Lucke,
Hermann Gmeiner’s philosophy, “to
do more than you need to” in caring
for children, fit her life’s aim. She had
worked for ten years in a Children’s
home in Brandenburg— “a less-than-
ideal situation” for the children there,
she says. She was told that the babies
should not be picked up so often be-
cause they’d get spoiled. “I could not
uphold those views. You can only
convey security by cuddling,” says
Lucke, SOS mother at the Branden-
burg Village since 1998.
Today Europe is home to some 350
SOS facilities that include a hundred
Children’s Villages, as well as youth
facilities, social centers, and a host
of kindergartens, vocational training
centers, Hermann Gmeiner schools,
and a medical center. Collectively,
staff at these facilities have served
more than 92,000 children and youth.
Mr. Potato Head
Started off using face pieces
that were put into a real potato. It
wasn’t until 8 years later that they
substituted a plastic hard body.
New for the 1950s
1956 First SOS Children’s Villages built
in France and Germany
1959 20 SOS Villages in Austria,
Germany, France and Italy
1
At left: SOS mother with
children, CV France; Right:
Children in the playground,
CV Germany
timeline
Albania
Austria
Belarus
Bosnia &
Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Estonia
Finland
France
French Polynesia
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Kosovo
Latvia
Lithuania
Luzembourg
Macedonia
Netherlands
Northern Cyprus
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Serbia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
VILLAGEVOICES
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4. 1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION PAGE 3
SOS in asia
G
meiner was in Korea responding to a plea from
Maria Heissenberger, a Catholic Women’s
Movement aid worker stationed in that country
to care for orphaned and abandoned children.
On home leave in Austria in 1961, she convinced Gmeiner
that he should go and witness firsthand the bleak situation
for Korea’s children. A decade after the end of the Korean
War, Korea had still not managed to rebuild, let alone pro-
vide for its homeless children.
“He ran along beside us,” recalled one witness, referring
to the boy who unknowingly brought SOS to South Korea.
“Before long, he caught our attention. We spoke in hand
signals to each other. We laughed, we gave him something
to eat. In the evening, he reached into his trouser pocket
and pulled out a grain of rice and laid it in Gmeiner’s hand.
Then he disappeared.”
Gmeiner and his young friend had met in Daegu, South
Korea’s third largest city. Like most of South Korea in 1963,
Daegu occupied a grim landscape of starvation, cold, and
poverty. But the grain of rice Kim handed Gmeiner was a
message of hope: rice symbolizes health and good fortune.
The night of that encounter, the idea for the “grain of rice
scheme” was born. Gmeiner launched the Grain of Rice
for Korea campaign. Millions of single grains of rice car-
rying the message “a grain of rice for a dollar” were sent to
households in Europe and the United States. Construction
of the SOS Children’s Village in Daegu began that same
year.
Spreading Elsewhere in Asia
After opening Villages in South Korea and the Philip-
pines, SOS moved into India. The SOS Children’s Village
in Greenfields, near Delhi, came into being in 1968 after
Hermann Gmeiner had met then Prime Minister Jawa-
harlal Nehru, who was impressed with the SOS concept.
India’s SOS association was founded under the auspices
of Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. With thirty-nine Vil-
lages, India hosts the most SOS Children’s Villages in the
world. Of India’s SOS Villages, eight serve Tibetan chil-
dren whose families fled Tibet over the years. China has
nine SOS Villages, including one in Lhasa.
The move into Central Asia began in 1996, when aban-
doned children found homes in SOS’s first Village in Geor-
gia. The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union had given a
social and economic jolt to its former states. Alcoholism
and poverty became rampant, resulting in children with in-
adequate care and many with no place to live. From 1997
to 2000, Villages opened for children in Kazakhstan, Kyr-
gyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.
Natural disasters in Asia have spurred SOS Children’s
Villages to go beyond its original mandate by providing
emergency relief. This aid often resulted in building per-
manent Children’s Villages. For instance, after Pakistan’s
devastating 2005 earthquake SOS Pakistan delivered food,
set up a pediatric hospital, provided shelter and care for vul-
nerable children and women, and created a family reunion
program. SOS became the only organization authorized
by the Pakistan government to provide long-time care for
Kashmiri orphans. SOS’s largest relief effort to date sup-
plied help to survivors of Asia’s 2004 tsunami; SOS built
more than 2,200 family houses together with community
and counseling centers, and provided 340 fishing boats.
SOS now has a presence in twenty-two Asian countries.
SOS China opened its national office in Beijing in 1987.
Since then, SOS China has grown to 10 Children’s Villag-
es. The largest SOS Hermann Gmeiner School in the world
is in SOS Yantai with 3,000 students.
A single grain of rice fueled SOS Children’s Villages’s
first foray outside of Europe.
expansion into asia
1963
Top: Children from SOS CV, Thailand; Bottom:
Hillside view in SOS Children’s Village in
Mussoorie, India
Rock ‘Em Sock
‘Em Robots
Originally marketed by Marx
toys, the combination game
and toy became a cultural
phenomenon and has been
reissued every decade since
its mid-1960s debut.
New for the 1960s
1964 Ecuador marks the start of
activities in Latin America
1965 First SOS Villages
opens in South Korea
1967 First SOS Village opens
in Argentina
Child handing grains of rice to
Hermann Gmeiner, South Korea
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Cambodia
China
Georgia
India
Indonesia
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Mongolia
Nepal
Pakistan
Philippines
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Syria
Taiwan
Thailand
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
A_43481.indd 4 4/30/09 1:31 PM

5. timeline
VILLAGEVOICESPAGE 4
SOS in latin america
to south
america
1964
Poverty, violence, civil war, and natural
disasters created the climate for SOS.
S
ocial workers and church
groups helping the poor
first brought Gmeiner’s
philosophy on caring for
children to Latin America. Gerhard
Engel, founded South America’s first
SOS Children’s Village in Ecuador’s
capital, Quito, in 1964. Eventually,
four more Ecuadorian Villages fol-
lowed, including one in Esmeraldas,
founded by an Italian priest in cooper-
ation with the local curacy. A Village
in Uruguay opened the same year,
then came Villages in Chile, Bolivia,
and Brazil. At 12,000 feet above sea
level, Bolivia’s SOS Children’s Vil-
lage in El Alto is the highest SOS Vil-
lage in the world. Brazil has the great-
est number of SOS facilities, 58 in all.
Today, SOS has a presence in all but
four Latin American countries.
Single mothers are one of Latin
America’s most troubled groups be-
cause of girl’s obstacles to education.
In the 1990s, SOS Ecuador built day
care centers for the children of single
mothers and working parents. These
services enable local mothers to work,
thereby helping to prevent family
break-ups due to poverty. The centers
also provide preventive health care
to children. In early 2000, SOS Chil-
dren’s Villages began family strength-
ening programs in Ecuador and else-
where in Latin America. SOS works
directly with families, communities,
and local authorities to empower par-
ents to effectively protect and care for
their children through microloans,
domestic violence prevention, and job
training.
Quito’s Children’s Village lies thir-
ty minutes outside of the city. It has
twelve family houses, a clinic, and a
residence for SOS “aunties”—SOS
mothers in training. The Village pro-
vides a home for children like Mar-
celino, who some thirty years ago ar-
rived there as a curious, restless child.
Marcelino wanted to be “a man in a
suit and tie carrying a briefcase” when
he grew up. Today he works for a mul-
tinational corporation. “The warmth
of a home and the invaluable love of
a mother, the games, the sports, the
learning, will always remain in my
memory and my heart,” he says about
his SOS childhood.
into central
america
1970
A
t the same time that Marcelino
was being cared for in Quito,
to the north of Ecuador simi-
lar children in Central America were
suffering due to the political instabil-
ity and natural disasters that left them
without homes or families. Honduras
has seven SOS Children’s Villages to-
day, including one caring for children
with special needs. Throughout the
1970s, SOS spread into neighboring
countries—Mexico (1971), El Salva-
dor (1972), Nicaragua (1973), Costa
Rica (1975), and Guatemala (1976).
A Guatemalan Village was built for
orphans after the 1976 earthquake;
a Honduran Village was set up after
SOS had provided food, temporary
accommodation, and financial help to
victims of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
Abandoned children like Javier
Francisco have been able to secure a
future because of their good fortune
in being delivered to an SOS Village.
When he was one-month old, the in-
fant was given to the SOS Children’s
Village at Tegucigalpa to be raised.
Called moto, the loner, by his SOS
siblings, he was sent to a special Vil-
lage for boys due to his rebelliousness.
There he met children worse off than
he was, and his life turned around. He
became class president and a tutor for
kids with learning problems. Javier
developed a passion for computers,
obtained a technical degree, and start-
ed his own computer company— and
that’s only the beginning of what he
wants to achieve. “I would like to form
a family and see my children grow up,
and of course I want to create an NGO
to help Honduran children in need.”
Javier’s story is emblematic of SOS’s
success in Central America.
SOS Children’s Villages gained its first
foothold in the Honduran capital of
Tegucigalpa.
1968 First SOS Children’s
Villages opens in India
1969 SOS now active in 22
countries in the Americas
First SOS Village
opens in Brazil
197
Top left: SOS Children’s Villages, Ecuador; Below: SOS children in tra-
ditional dress in Honduras, Americas
timeline
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Dominican
Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Haiti
Honduras
Jamaica
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Uruguay
Venezuela
VILLAGEVOICES
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6. 1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION PAGE 5
SOS in africa
A
French priest named Father Martin had cre-
ated an orphans’ home near Abidjan, the coun-
try’s largest city, as early as the 1960s. Many
children needed homes at the time because
traditional family structures were crumbling and unem-
ployment was high. Eventually Father Martin received of-
ficial help in obtaining a plot of land in Abobo-Gare, nine
miles outside of Abidjan. In 1971 the priest met Hermann
Gmeiner and they joined forces to start Africa’s first SOS
Children’s Village. That Village was built in a palm grove,
and today has ten family houses that provide stable homes
for a hundred children. In 1980 local Village staff became
aware that custom in a nearby region dictated that families
abandon their tenth child who allegedly would bring bad
luck. This tragic situation prompted SOS to build a second
Children’s Village, in Aboisso.
HIV/AIDS has orphaned more than 310,000 children in
Côte d’Ivoire. Because of the illness’s stigma, the husbands
of women known to be HIV positive are often pressured
by relatives to abandon their wives and children. Working
with local NGOs, SOS gives a monthly food package to
families and provides basic medical care. Since 2004, SOS
Côte d’Ivoire has also built facilities to provide medical as-
sistance to people with AIDS. SOS offers families a sense
of dignity by engaging them in income-generating activi-
ties. Dona, for example, a grandmother caring for several
small children, bought a second refrigerator to increase her
capacity to sell cold drinks and ice cream. The children
raised in Côte d’Ivoire’s two SOS Villages enjoy lives un-
heard of for most of the country’s orphans. “They eat well,
sleep well, and have all that is needed for their well-being
and success,” says 55-year-old Elizabeth, an SOS mother
who retired in 2005 after twenty-two years of raising SOS
children in Cote d’Ivoire.
Ghana Education
Strengthening families and offering a first-rate sec-
ondary education have been priorities for SOS in Ghana,
which hosted its first SOS Children’s Village in 1974. After
a chance exposure to SOS activities while visiting Nor-
way in the late 1960s, Ghanan social worker Mercy Busia
contacted Kimderdorf International and requested an SOS
Children’s Village be built in her country. Ghana’s first
such Village opened in 1974 in Tema, a port city twenty
miles from the capital of Accra. Today, the SOS Hermann
Gmeiner International College, a senior secondary board-
ing school founded in 1990, offers a baccalaureate to tal-
ented SOS youths from all over Africa.
SOS progress in Africa has been mixed with tragedy.
For instance, SOS Children’s Villages remained in Soma-
lia throughout nearly two decades of civil war. Today SOS
runs a mother and child clinic in Mogadishu and hospital
that is the only one of its kind. Other sad scenes took place
in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique,
Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. Yet
SOS is still active in all of these countries. In Liberia, for
example, in 2003 more than 8,000 people fled to SOS fa-
cilities near the capital, Monrovia, when fighting broke out.
In 1999 children, mothers, and staff from SOS Children’s
Village Bo in Sierra Leone were repeatedly forced to hide
in the bush to survive. In the years to come, Africa will
remain the most important target area for SOS Children’s
Villages.
The former French colony of
Côte d’Iovoire was the site of
SOS’s first presence in Africa..
1971
into africa
Top: SOS family ,CV Mada-
gascar; Bottom: Children at
the entrance of SOS Gmei-
ner school in Sudan, Africa
Rubik’s Cube
Invented in 1974 by a college
lecturer in Budapest, it gained
popularity without promotion
or publicity through word
of mouth. Marketing began
eventually in 1979.
New for the 1970s
1971 First SOS Village
opens in Côte d’Ivoire
1973 First SOS Village
opens in Kenya
1976 First SOS Village
opens in Egypt
1979 Total of 143
Villages worldwide
Children at the SOS Children’s Villages in Tema,
Ghana
Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Central African
Republic
Chad
Côte d’Ivoire
Congo,
Democratic
Republic
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Ethiopia
Gambia, The
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritius
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Rwanda
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Somaliland
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
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7. timeline
VILLAGEVOICESPAGE 6
SOS in middle east
L
ebanon provided SOS the
first opportunity to bring
its concept of caring for
orphaned and abandoned
children to the Middle East. The first
SOS Children’s Village was opened
in 1969 in the small town of Bikfaya.
The Village is surrounded by pines on
a hillside overlooking the Mediterra-
nean Sea. Six years after its creation,
the Village fell victim to a decades-
long civil war. Despite the turmoil,
SOS staff have been steadfast in their
commitment to easing the suffering
of Lebanon’s orphans. SOS has been
able to build three more Villages in
Lebanon, the most recent one in 2004.
Following Lebanon came two Villages
in the Palestinian Territories— Beth-
lehem (1968) and Rafah (2001). SOS
broadening our
middle east presence
1980s
SOS builds families for Muslim and Israeli children.
Bethlehem includes a psycho-social
mobile medical center for children and
families traumatized by war. In 2005
this service was extended to Nablus,
Hebron, Jericho, and Jenin. The SOS
Children’s Village Bethlehem, in col-
laboration with other NGOs, offers
family strengthening programs, psy-
chological and psychiatric assistance,
and medical treatment.
During more peaceful times, SOS
Villages create happy memories for
children. Ahlam, an eleven-year-old
girl at SOS Bethlehem, describes cel-
ebrating Ramadan, a month of fasting,
prayer, and charity. “On the first day
I go with my SOS mother Wessam to
buy fruit, vegetables, and the ingredi-
ents for all the sweets my SOS mother
makes during the month. My favorite
is katayef [a raisin-, nut- or cream-
stuffed pancake fried and dipped in
sweet syrup]. We all help my mother
clean the house, then we hang lights
and crescents especially for Rama-
dan. The entire Village gathers for a
group Iftar [the meal after breaking
the fast at sunset].”
Similar holiday scenes take place
at SOS Children’s Villages in Egypt
and Sudan, whose governments wel-
comed SOS in 1976 and 1978, re-
spectively. The 1980s saw the biggest
growth for SOS Children’s Villages in
the Middle East, with openings in Is-
rael (1981), Algeria (1981-1983), Mo-
rocco (1985), and Jordan (1986).
The decision to build SOS Chil-
dren’s Villages in Jordan dates to
a 1982 and SOS Children’s Village
Amman was officially inaugurated
by King Hussein and Queen Noor in
1987. It has sixteen family houses for
more than a hundred children, a home
for retired SOS mothers, a computer
lab, and its own supermarket, where
produce from the SOS farm is sold.
Jordan has three SOS Villages today.
In 2003, four years after the death
of her husband King Hussein, Queen
Noor wrote about her longtime in-
volvement with SOS Children’s Vil-
lages in her memoir, Leap of Faith:
Memoirs of an Unexpected Life:
“...to make the world a better, safer,
and fairer place for all...we must start
with children in everything that we
do, and that is exactly what SOS Chil-
dren’s Villages has been doing since
the end of the Second World War.”
SOS Amman provides a home for
orphaned children like siblings Qusai,
Mohammad, Odai, Ra’fat, and Fati-
ma. In 1996 the family was in a ter-
rible car accident on the desert road
between Amman and Saudi Arabia,
on their way to pilgrimage. Eleven
years old at the time, Qusai watched
his parents and youngest brother die.
With her last breath, his mother asked
him to care for his brothers and sis-
ters. The siblings roamed the streets,
selling empty cans and cigarettes to
survive. A relative reported their case
to Queen Noor, and the siblings were
sent to the SOS Children’s Village in
Amman. There they found an SOS
mother and a family home. Today,
Qusai is a young man working hard to
ensure a secure and bright future for
his siblings.
Care Bears
The characters were created for greeting
cards by American Greetings. By 1983,
they had been launched as a line of
plush toys which soon followed as
movies and televisions specials.
New for the 1980s
1981 International staff
training facility
opens in Austria
1981
1983
First SOS Villages
opens in Israel
and Albania
1985 Helmut Kutin
succeeds Gmeiner
as President
1985 First SOS
Village opens
in Jordon
19
SOS Children’s
Villages, Lebanon
Angelina Jolie with an SOS
family in CV Amman, Jordan in
December 2003
Algeria
Egypt
Georgia
Israel
Jordan
Lebanon
Morocco
Palestinian
Tunisia
Turkey
VILLAGEVOICES
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8. 1949–2009 ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Lockport, Illinois in 1993. “I remem-
bered my German family’s loyalty to
SOS when I was a youth. And when I
saw firsthand the plight of foster chil-
dren in Chicago, I wanted to see if we
could establish such a haven for chil-
dren in the US.”
PAGE 7
SOS in north america
B
y 1963, Americans supporting SOS
work around the world formalized
their efforts by registering under the
name Friends of SOS Children’s Vil-
lages, Inc. The target of American fundraising
was children in developing countries, but plenty
of U.S. children have long been in need of stable
homes outside of the foster system. In the late
1980s SOS came to Illinois and Florida.
The first SOS Children’s Village on U.S. soil
opened in Coconut Creek, north of Miami, Flor-
ida, in 1993. A second village followed in 1994,
in Lockport, thirty miles southwest of Chicago,
Illinois. The first ever urban SOS village was
built in Chicago in 2004. The SOS presence in
Canada began in 1969. Canada now hosts one
SOS Children’s Village in Surrey, a suburb of
Vancouver, British Columbia. Together, these
four villages provide homes for some 270 chil-
dren and youths, and through an SOS social cen-
ter in Chicago, daycare, counseling, and basic
clinic care to an additional fifty children.
SOS Chicago was created for foster children
who had suffered too many placements and sep-
aration from their brothers and sisters. Profes-
sional staff and loving surrogate mothers work
to heal these wounds and reunite siblings.
Compared to other forms of out-of-home
care in Chicago, SOS Children’s Village enables
multiple families to live together and support
one another. Four of its houses allow biologi-
cal parents, usually single parents, to live on the
ground floor, while their children live on the first
floor with their SOS mothers. Program director
of SOS Children’s Village in Illinois, explains:
“We aim to send as many children as possible
back to live with their families in a foreseeable
amount of time. If there is a good chance that
a family will be able to overcome its difficult
situation with the right kind of support, we help
them in that way. If the parents live in the same
house, the bond between them and their children
does not break. Parents can be involved in the
daily lives of their children to an extent, and they
learn the importance to children of structure,
stability, and reliability.”
SOS Villages in the U.S. and Canada provide a
positive alternative to traditional foster care.
moving into
north america
1993
The Dirk Lohan Distinguished Leadership Award
Atlanta Chapter News
Two SOS alumni recently organized the first SOS
“chapter” in Atlanta, GA.
Irene Bailey grew up in an SOS Children’s Village
in Germany. Moses Kabia, from Sierra Leone,
lost both his parents before he turned 9 and was
brought to the closest SOS Children’s Village,
where he was nurtured, loved, and educated.
The SOS Chapter in Atlanta already has 12
core members who are actively involved in
fundraising and building awareness for SOS in
the community. In December 2008, they hosted
a big event and managed to raise $7,000. “I am
dedicated to providing many more orphans, like
myself, this same loving family and schooling that
I had,” said Bailey during the chapter’s inaugural
ceremony in December. “I also want to help
developing countries build their own capacity to
take care of their own children.”
For more information or to join the Atlanta
Chapter, please visit our website at
www.sos-usa.org/ Atlanta
SOS has created a new leadership
award in the name of Dirk Lohan,
longtime SOS supporter, who recently
retired as President of the SOS-USA
Board. Mr. Lohan, a renowned Chica-
go architect, was instrumental in the
founding of the first SOS Village in
Lohan’s commitment to SOS con-
tinued over the next twenty years.
To commemorate his valuable ser-
vice, SOS-USA will now award the
“Dirk Lohan Distinguished Leader-
ship Award” each year. “There are so
many people in this world who give
pens
1990 SOS starts
activities in Russia
and Poland
1991 First SOS Village
opens in U.S. in
Coconut Creek, FL
1995 SOS obtains
consultative
status to the UN
1999 50th anniversary;
Total of 400
Villages worldwide
At right: SOS
Children’s Villages,
Illinois at Lockport,
USA
Left: First SOS
chapter event
held at Ibiza
Restaurant,
Chicago in
December 2008
their time, their talent and their finan-
cial support to SOS. Dirk epitomized
such a commitment. Now we can hon-
or his service and future supporters
who follow him, “ says Heather Paul,
Executive Director.
Canada
United States
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