SOS Children's Villages USA, Inc.

SOS Children's Villages envisions a world in which every child belongs to a family and grows up with love, respect and security. Unique to SOS Children's Villages, we build families for children in need, help them shape their own futures and share in the development of their communities.

Guided by the high international standards set forth in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, we believe that all children should grow up in a family environment—their own family, if possible, and with the individual child’s best interests in mind. We aim to prevent crises that lead to family breakdown, reducing the chance that a child will be left without parental care.

Over the past seven decades, SOS Children’s Villages has continually expanded and improved our model of care across 136 countries and territories. We utilize a fully comprehensive approach of helping children, families and communities succeed long-term and have a long history of building effective partnerships with governments, international organizations and community-based partners. With over 99% of our 38,000-person global workforce hired locally, SOS Children’s Villages is uniquely positioned to implement programs that are tailored to the diverse needs and contexts of each community, country and region in which we work.

SOS Children's Villages works in four core areas to help children and families reach their full potential:

Family strengthening: We provide support to vulnerable families to prevent family separation and child abandonment. Through locally-led, scalable programs, SOS addresses the systemic issues that lead to family breakdown—like poverty and domestic abuse. Our family strengthening programs offer comprehensive interventions tailored to each family’s needs, including vocational training, health care, nutritional support, parenting workshops and counseling—with the ultimate goal of self-sufficiency.

Care: We offer loving homes for children who lack parental care. Our villages—more than 540 worldwide— provide a family-like setting where children grow up alongside their siblings in a stable, nurturing environment. Children live in a house with an SOS mother who supports their needs and guides their development. Approximately 40,000 children currently call an SOS village home. An additional 25,000 children and youth live in other SOS alternative care programs including foster families and youth care homes.

Education and youth employability: We educate and empower children to reach their full potential. Education is critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and achieving self-sufficiency. Whether at a dedicated SOS school or in community-integrated training, we enable previously out-of-school or at-risk students to continue their education through provision of essential services. We address economic barriers to education; improve educational capacity at public schools by training staff and purchasing critical teaching equipment; and provide coaching and vocational training to youth entering the workforce.

Advocacy and policy: We raise the voices of children and give them a seat at the table. SOS advocates on behalf of children—and encourages children to advocate for themselves. Through advocacy at the local, national and international levels, we educate decision-makers on the rights and needs of children, advancing policies that impact children’s lives.

Other core components of SOS programs include emergency response, preventing violence against children, ending child trafficking, empowering women and girls and healing childhood trauma.

Since 1949, SOS Children’s Villages has helped transform the lives of approximately 13 million people. We have impacted children, youth and their families through family-like care in our villages, family strengthening and
education programs and emergency relief services.

In 2020 alone, SOS operated more than 2,800 programs—reaching more than 1 million children and families across the globe. With over 99% of our 39,000-person global workforce hired locally, SOS is uniquely positioned to implement programs that are tailored to the diverse needs and contexts of each community, country and region in which we work.

SOS Children's Villages has continually expanded and improved our model of care across 136 countries and territories. We utilize a comprehensive approach of helping children, families and communities succeed long-term. Through effective partnerships with governments, international organizations and community-based partners, we provide individualized support to families so they can give their children the best possible start in life. And when a child can’t stay with their family, or has no family, we give them a permanent home in one of our
SOS villages.

The innovative work of SOS Children’s Villages has been recognized both nationally and internationally. We are proud to have earned prestigious awards and accreditations, and we have built valuable partnerships that transform the lives of children and families. SOS is also privileged to work with committed colleagues from across the child rights community to bring global attention to children who lack parental care.

At SOS Children's Villages we are dedicated to the care of orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children. Our innovative programs—2,800 in 2020 alone—aim to disrupt the cycles of poverty, family separation and child
abandonment. We prevent family breakdown before it begins; eliminate the obstacles that hold families back; and
equip children and families with the vital resources and skills they need to become self-sufficient. Stronger families—whether biological or in our SOS villages—mean brighter futures for the children and families involved, and healthier communities for all.

SOS is committed to measuring the long-term impact of our work to improve the quality of our services, inform strategic decision-making and increase accountability to our beneficiaries, partners and donors. Of 3,450 former
program participants interviewed across 37 countries, data revealed that 90% of former participants are now providing quality care to their own children—breaking the generational cycles of family separation and abandonment.

We currently provide loving homes to over 65,000 children in 137 countries and territories around the world. Our strategic goals aim to strengthen the quality and outreach of our programs to ensure that many more children will have loving homes and an equal chance to succeed in life. Today, SOS transforms the lives of more than 1 million children and families each year. We will continue to increase our capacity to serve vulnerable children and our long-term impact on them by providing quality child care, strengthening families, empowering young people, and advocating for children's rights.