This is the charity homepage of SOS Children, the world’s largest orphan and abandoned children’s charity. Our vision is “a loving home for every child” and we think our approach is the best for children and child sponsors alike. Child sponsors and donors worldwide provide a new family and home for more than 78,000 children in 518 unique Children’s Villages in 125 countries. Our supporters also help a million children and their families through our programmes in the surrounding communities.

SOS Children: Offering real child sponsorship

We offer real child sponsorship, the way we think it should be done. Our sponsors and donors help children whose parents are not there for them. They may be AIDS orphans, street children, child soldiers or children orphaned by war, poverty or natural disasters. We give these children a mother and a family in a home within an SOS Children’s Village. Donations pay to build the Villages and run them until child sponsors cover the running costs. Where family life is at risk (for example where parents in Africa have AIDS), we run programmes to help strengthen families and keep them together.

Although we are always trying to improve it, our working model is very simple. We take groups of seven to ten (less in the developed world) children alone and put them together with a permanent resident SOS mother to make a family for life. We group a dozen or so SOS families like this together in a Village and then work out from this centre to try to help the wider community with the facilities needed. If there is no adequate medical care, we provide it, if no school we build one, if there are families on the edge nearby (child headed families etc) we support them. Our strategic goal for the next eight years is to help a million child sponsors give a million children a family for life. Of these, one hundred thousand children will be given a new family and home in an SOS Children's Village. Nine hundred thousand children, who might otherwise be street children, will be able to grow up within their own (extended) family with our support.