Capital: Damascus
Area: 185,180 km²
Population: 18.5 million (July 2005)
Ethnic groups: Arabs, Kurds, Armenians
Official language(s): Arabic
Religion(s): Sunni Muslim, Alawite, Druze, Christian, Jewish
Currency: 1 Syrian pound = 100 piastres
SOS Children's Villages' activities in the country
Helga Zündel was the SOS-Kinderdorf International representative in the Near East and in 1974, during a visit to the Austrian consul in Damascus, she presented an SOS Children's Village project to a number of important Syrians. They were very impressed by Hermann Gmeiner's concept of giving a family-like home to orphaned and abandoned children. Just one year later the Syrian SOS Children's Village Association was founded.
The construction of the first Syrian SOS Children's Village in Qodsaya, close to the capital of Damascus, was completed in 1980. The first children and their mothers were able to move into the village in the summer of 1981. An SOS Youth Facility was built in Sahnaya for the older youths in 1986. Here they are helped to prepare to live on their own and are assisted in looking for jobs.
The decision was made in the 1990's to build a second SOS Children's Village in Syria. Khan El Assal, near Aleppo, in the north of the country, was chosen as the location. This SOS Children's Village was completed at the beginning of 1998 and shortly thereafter the families were able to move in.
Since 1996, single mothers and their children, who are in need of it, are being given food at the SOS Social Centre in Darayya, a suburb of Damascus. Training courses are being offered to the women and the older children to help them on the first rung of the ladder to finding a job.
At present there are two SOS Children's Villages in Syria, two SOS Youth Facilities, one SOS Kindergarten and one SOS Social Centre.