The fifty children that had been living in rented flats waiting for their village to be completed were finally able to move into their houses with their SOS mothers. And they were finally able to make themselves feel at home in their rooms, explore their way to school, become friends with children from the other families and get used to everyday life in their new surroundings. When the SOS Children's Village is fully occupied, 14 families with a total of 120 children will be living in a row of houses in a small side street in the city.
"The conquest of a village" - What happens when fifty children come home at the same time. This is shown in the film from Cali.
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| One of the SOS families in their new home - Photo: Ivannia Cambronero |
Santiago de Cali, the capital of the Departamento Valle del Cauca, used to be notorious for being home to one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world. Although the drug cartel no longer exists, drug trafficking and the violence and crime that go hand in hand with it still hold back the development of the regional economy and continue to pose a daily threat to the two million inhabitants of this city. Cali and its commuter belt - very much in demand for industry and agriculture because of its favourable location - are faced with the same problems as the whole of Colombia. Many people flee the countryside for the city because of fear of the armed conflict and poverty, or they are deliberately driven out of their homes. However, in the urban agglomerations many of them are faced with precisely what they wanted to escape in the first place. Between 1997 and 2009 Cali alone absorbed more than 60,000 refugees, most of them women and children. In Colombia, some three million people are refugees in their own country.
Statistic data on the situation of children in Santiago de Cali 2008 - 2009
In the vicious circle of being uprooted, unemployment, poverty, violence, poor medical care, limited education and a lack of social facilities for the underprivileged members of the population it is most often the children who are the first to fall by the wayside or who are abandoned because nobody wants or is able to care for them.
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| Brothers and sisters only! - Photo: Ivannia Cambronero |
This is what happened to the siblings Kimberly, Leidy and Brian. Their father had never lived with them and when their mother died only their grandmother was left. She herself was ill and had no money. After a detailed analysis of their situation and given that the children did not have a relative that could take care of them, the three siblings went to live at SOS Children's Village Cali.
Our picture gallery shows how Kimberly, Leidy and Brian find their way in their new SOS family.
Other children now live at the SOS Children's Village in Cali because they were sexually abused, were victims of violence at home or were neglected - a fate they share with many other children. Frequently, the only solution is to take the children out of their families of origin if they have not already been abandoned by their families. However, there are many families whose situation - often resulting from poverty and excessive demands - can be considerably improved through the appropriate support, thus ensuring that the children receive the appropriate care and protection.
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| In one of the community centres in Comuna 18 - Photo: Ivannia Cambronero |
In some districts of Cali life is particularly dangerous. These districts are home to drug dealers, armed gangs, the police, army and paramilitaries who fight each other. One of these slums is Comuna 18, where SOS Children's Villages has already been operating an SOS Social Centre for two years to support families in need and in crisis situations. The staff members wear a uniform with the SOS Children's Village logo. "For our own security", says one of them. Two community centres with child minder programmes are affiliated to the SOS Social Centre as well. The families "own" and run these centres themselves. SOS Children's Villages plays an advisory role and provides vocational training courses. Juan David, Valentina and Nicolás' family is one of them. The eight members of this family live together in a very confined space and are faced with a variety of problems that, amongst other things, lead to aggression. Since the family has been receiving support from the SOS Social Centre and the community centre, their life has improved considerably and many things have changed for the better for Juan David, Valentina and Nicolás.
The article "A break amid the conflict" describes how SOS Children's Villages works with the families in Comuna 18.
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| There is of course a beautiful playground as well - Photo: Ivannia Cambronero |
Over the past four decades more than 2,600 children have grown up in Colombian SOS Children's Villages, while at present some 800 children and young people are being cared for. Cali is the sixth location and a seventh SOS Children's Village is currently being built in Cartagena, which will include a range of additional family programmes. The social centres and the affiliated community centres that are coordinated independently by the families in particular make a considerable contribution towards creating prospects and real opportunities for the future for children and their families (in 2008 some 6,700 children and adults were supported in the social programmes).