 Since 1933, SOS Hermann Gmeiner School Concepción in Chile (founded in 1986 as a technical school), has been awarding its students professional technical certificates, and more than 600 of them have successfully entered the labor market. They are now working for companies and in the service industry throughout the country.  The housing programme, one of the services offered by the family strengthening programme of SOS Children's Villages Benin in Abomey-Calavi, provides families with a decent place to live and therefore helps them to stay together and break the cycle of poverty. Léocadie and her three daughters were among the first beneficiaries of the housing programme.  "The family is a 50,000-year-old institution and it works!" National Director of SOS Children's Villages Poland Elzbieta Janczur says light-heartedly. Securing a family and a home for children lies at the core of SOS Children's Villages work. In Poland, a recent pilot project has brought couples to its children's villages.  What do when you want to read a book? Do you buy one from a bookshop, order one online or borrow one from a library? But what do you do if none of that is possible or if you are so poor that you can not afford to buy a book? Then education has to come to you, which is exactly what has happened with the mobile library at SOS Children's Village Flores in Indonesia.  The SOS family strengthening programme in Georgia is often the only glimmer of hope for socially disadvantaged families that are on the verge of abandoning their children. |