Worldwide there are relief organizations to support children, youths and families. UNICEF, Deaconry and Terre des Hommes etc. belong to them. This network provides a strong and important cooperation between single nations. They all have one target: children’s villages, family replacing parenting institutions and more for broken families and orphan children. One of the largest organizations are the SOS Children’s Villages. They are active in 132 countries. Many of the children who live here show psychic damages and some backlogs in their development, caused by their past. In the villages the children should recover a family life and learn to assimilate humanly and socially. If necessary they are assisted by psychologists. Other staff members are conscientious objectors performing community services, educators and family helpers.
The SOS-mothers become the most important reference person, replacing the natural mother. Averagely they parent several children in one family. It is a close family-like constitution, parenting by life partnership, learning to act autonomously and live non-violent. Not only full-time support is the centre of attention of the organizations, but they also help single mothers, for example by supplying food. They can also provide emergency-help for intact families who have lost everything they had by a tsunami.
For needy families additional facilities like hospitals and youth homes are arranged. With all these facilities we should never forget, what all this work is done for and how effective it is. To be successful it is very important for all to pull together. It mostly depends on cooperation, tolerance, willingness to help of all employees and the particular ambience of the children’s village / the facility. The single pieces need to chain to work against social exclusion of the children. The villages don’t have their own schools or churches, to assist a life in the public community.
The children’s villages are not oriented on profit. They are sponsored by donations (money), adoption and by receiving benefits etc.
They are not reliant on the state, work very close with the youth welfare service, which does make the first contact to needy persons.
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