SOS Children's Villages and World Orphan Week 2010

Feb. 11, 2010 - PRLog -- 2010: World Orphan Week, taking place February 8-14, comes at a particularly poignant time in 2010. Thousands of Haitian children wander the streets of Port-au-Prince, hungry and homeless. Most are still deeply traumatized by having watched everything they knew and loved collapse around them during that nation's terrible earthquake on January 12.

Sadly, Haiti's disaster orphans make up only a small fraction of the millions of children around the globe who have lost their families to natural disaster, war, and disease. The numbers are staggering. According to UNICEF estimates, 163 million children have seen one or both parents die. In South Africa alone, some 1.8 million boys and girls are AIDS orphans.

But such overwhelming statistics need not paralyze us from taking action.

SOS Offers Concrete Hope to Children, One Boy and Girl at a Time

Helping the world's orphans starts by focusing on one child at a time. That's just what SOS does. SOS Children's Villages is a charity that has been providing loving homes, education, and health care to vulnerable children for 60 years. The organization operates 500 Children's Villages in 132 countries. SOS has provided new families for more than 78,000 children.

SOS's family-based model of care is based on the belief that children whose families are unable to care for them deserve a chance to grow up surrounded by love and support within their own geographic and cultural environment.

That's why SOS children are raised by professionally trained local SOS mothers who anchor them with warm homes and lifetime emotional bonds. SOS children who have left the Children's Village for independent lives, including good jobs and families of their own, visit their SOS mothers for years, even after the mothers have officially retired.

World Orphan Week 2010 Spotlights How We Can Help

Innocent children whose lives have been turned upside down by factors beyond their control deserve to be given hope. SOS has six decades of experience delivering such hope in concrete terms. SOS operates in war-torn, disaster-prone countries where children are most likely to suffer. SOS can get things done because of the trust it has built by working together with local governments and social welfare agencies.

Give an orphan a chance-during this special week and every other week of the year. Please sponsor SOS children who have been victims to disaster, war, or disease.

For more information:
http://www.sos-usa.org/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/SOS-...

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For 60 years, SOS Children's Villages has been dedicated to the long-term care and prevention of orphaned and abandoned children. Through their Children's Villages, Family Strengthening Programs, and other initiatives, SOS impacts the lives of over 1 million people each year. In 2009, SOS Children's Villages received the Save the World Award. SOS has also received numerous honors including the Mother Teresa Gold Medal, the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, and the Vietnam Friendship Medal. For more information about SOS Children's Villages, visit http://www.sos-usa.org.