TOI: SOS Children’s Villages of India – Fostering hope for orphans: November 05, 2008

The new children’s village that will be spread over three acres, will comprise 14 cottages, which will house a total of 150 children from the city and its surrounding regions. The village is being supported by Esprit, an international lifestyle products brand, right from the acquisition of land to its construction. The brand will also support it for the initial few years.

The pujan on Tuesday saw Esprit president Asia Pacific region, Wolfram Hail and deputy secretary general, SOS Kinderoff International, Siddhartha Kaul. President SOS India, S Sandilya laid the foundation stones for the upcoming village. SOS adopts children who have lost their families and brings them up in an environment replete with a family system and a foster mother, usually a woman who is either divorced or single or widowed. Each family comprises 8-10 children and their mother. About 10-20 such families constitute an SOS Children’s Village. 

“The children are given vocational training to prepare them for an independent life. The village, however, continues to be home for them even if they marry and live outside,’’ said Sandilya. Often these children go on to pursue their dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, investment bankers and lawyers. According to Sandilya, several of them, despite being settled abroad, return to their ‘homes’ to help their foster brothers and sisters. When the foster mothers retire, they are given a home to stay in where they are looked after and in some cases, their foster children return to take care of them. 

“Despite being an institution, their way of functioning is not institutionalised and foster mothers are free to have a say in what the children wear or eat, like a regular family,’’ said Wolfram Hail. “It is not a one-time thing. The officials try and provide a stable family background to children who have lost everything. They also follow up with them till they grow up to be mature, self-sufficient adults.’’

SOS Children’s Villages was set up in Austria in 1949. It set up its first children’s village at Faridabad in India in 1964. Currently, it has 39 such villages across the country, including nine Tibetan villages. The officials provide homes to newborn babies who are abandoned by their parents and also to those children who have lost their families. The institution also has a marriage bureau for the girls in their homes.