SOS Children’s Villages

What we do

Family Strengthening program

A significant part of our work is oriented towards prevention: working with disadvantaged families to help prevent crises that can lead to family breakdown. We offer various forms of support to strengthen and stabilize them as much as possible so that children can grow up in their own families.

Our objective is to build on the skills and capacity of biological parents and other relatives, SOS families, social workers and other carers within the community to ensure that children enjoy positive and caring relationships.

The SOS Village

In cases where the child has no parents or it is not in the child’s best interests to live with the biological family, we provide alternative care. We build SOS families who provide children with stable and loving homes. Depending on the child’s needs, we also support and offer other forms of care, such as foster care or even short term care.

SOS families model is founded on four basic principles:

A Village: the SOS family is part of the community

A House: each family creates its own home

A Mother: each child has a caring parent

Siblings: family ties grow naturally, and biological brothers and sisters always stay together

Education
We believe that through quality education, the cycle of exclusion, poverty, domestic violence and family breakdown can be stopped. SOS Children’s Villages operates kindergartens, day-care centers, schools and vocational training centers, promoting quality education together with partners such as public schools.

Health
SOS Children’s Villages provides individualized care and supports communities in the development of improved health service infrastructure. We also run medical centers in underdeveloped areas where we specialize in the care of women and children.

Emergency
In situations of crisis, war and disaster, children often require specific protection and care. SOS Children’s Villages is in a strong position to promptly respond with an established infrastructure available to help whenever children and families need urgent assistance.

SOS Children’s Villages Gulf Area Office

The Gulf Area Office is a branch office of SOS Children’s Villages International and is located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

It covers six countries including the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the State of Kuwait and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The objective of the Gulf Area Office is to build long-term strategic partnerships for the benefit of children and to raise awareness of SOS Children’s Villages programmes and impact across the globe and in particular, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The Gulf Area Office works closely with programs in MENA countries and in areas where SOS Children’s Villages runs extensive emergency programs to support operational efforts on the ground.  The Gulf Area Office also works with local NGOs, government and humanitarian organizations to improve the situation of children around the world.