SOS Children's Villages

SOS Children is the world's largest orphan & abandoned children charity. Supported by sponsors and donors worldwide, our children's charity provides a new family (in amazing Children's Villages) for over 60,000 children in 124 countries and helps over one million other children through our projects around the world.

Our main role is helping children whose parents are not there for them: Aids orphans, street children, child soldiers and children orphaned by war or disasters, such as tsunami or earthquakes. In places where there is a high rate of child abandonment, we also run programs to help strengthen vulnerable families and keep them together.

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Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Destroyed by decades of war, civil strife, political instability and economic depletion, Cambodia's infrastructure, human capital and social services are only slowly being rebuilt. The majority of the population live in rural areas, are poor and lack access to even the most basic services. With over half of the population under the age of 18 years, there are serious concerns for their economic and social well-being.

It is one of the worst affected countries in the region by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the impact on many households in human and financial terms is devastating.

The charity opened its first community in Cambodia in the summer of 2001 in the capital, Phnom Penh. The village has fourteen family houses built in traditional Cambodian style, and is home to 140 children. For many of them, aged between three and twelve years old, the village not only provides protection and security but also the opportunity to attend school for the first time in their lives. Like most SOS Children communities, there is an SOS kindergarten which has room for 200 children, the majority of whom are from the local community.

A second village, SOS Children Angkor/Siem Reap, opened in 2002 a few kilometres from the famous temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia's greatest tourist attraction. The village, on the main road to the City of Temples, has fourteen family houses. A school for 500 pupils is under construction, as well as a kindergarten, both of which will be open to children from the local community. As the community becomes established, a youth house will be built for the older boys where they can their first guided steps towards independence.

A third SOS Children's Village opened at Battambang in the north-west of the country in 2006. There are 15 family homes for 150 children. Three of the SOS families are for HIV-infected children with specially trained mothers. There is an SOS Nursery School for 120 children, which is open to children from the neighbourhood as well. An SOS Social Centre is based at the Nursery School, which helps children and their families within their own community. These families are given medicine and food and are helped to send their children to school and to prevent parents from abandoning their children because they see no other way out of their misery.

Further information can be found at:

www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/sponsor-a-child/asian-child-sponsorship/cambodia.htm