Capital: Bern
Area: 41,290 km²
Population: 7.3 million (December 2000 est.)
Ethnic groups: 80% Swiss
Official language(s): German, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romanic
Religion(s): 46% Catholic, 40% Protestant, 5% other faiths like Muslim or Jewish
Currency: 1 Swiss franc = 100 centimes
"Bring me a few grains of rice and ask also your friends to give me some. I want to bring this rice to the people in the world and ask them to give me some money in return for each grain of rice so that I can build a village for you and your homeless friends" Hermann Gmeiner asked an orphaned boy in Korea in the early 1960s. The grains were mailed to people in Europe and North America in 1963 asking them to give one dollar for each grain of rice. Switzerland also joined in actively in this campaign. One year later, on 2 April 1964, Georg Wildbolz, the former director of Bally Austria, founded the association "Schweizer Freunde der SOS-Kinderdörfer" (Swiss Friends of the SOS Children's Villages) encouraged by Hermann Gmeiner.
The first project to be financed was a family house in the first SOS Children's Village to be built outside Europe in Daegu, South Korea, in 1964. In 1969 another family house in Chile followed and from 1977 onwards several family houses were financed every year by the Swiss Friends. Due to the increasing number of donors, in 1977, it was possible for the first time to take over the partial financial responsibility for an SOS Children's Village, being the SOS Children's Village Rio Hondo in Peru. In 1990 the first SOS Children's Village to be financed completely by the Swiss Friends went into operation in Tehuacán, Mexico. In the meantime more than 15 SOS Children's Villages and a number of supporting facilities have been realized thanks to the Swiss people.
Today the Swiss association is one of the most important promoting associations of SOS-Kinderdorf International. Since the foundation of the association in 1964 until the end of the year 2002 more than 188 million Swiss Francs have been raised for the construction and maintenance of numerous SOS Children's Villages in developing countries and Eastern Europe. Today the association counts with the support from some 190,000 friends and more than 6,000 sponsors. One of the most important partners of the Swiss Friends is the former Swiss airline Swiss Air. The Swiss Air personnel set up a foundation which by now is already supporting over 15 family houses in different SOS Children's Villages worldwide over the past years.
Website of SOS Children's Villages Switzerland (available in French, Italian and German)