SOS Children’s Villages provides loving homes, clean water, and sanitary living conditions for orphaned and abandoned children in India. The organization has been on the ground for more than four decades and gives many children and communities basic health and social care that they would otherwise be without.

In India, increased urbanisation and modernisation may have lead to the growth of India’s urban middle class, but this wealth has not reached India’s slums. The ruthless expansion of already overcrowded cities has actually seen conditions for many of the cities poorer areas become worse. Almost a third of Delhi’s residents live in slums where open sewers and unclean water are a way of life.

Children are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases, while the spread of disease in slums leaves many either orphaned or abandoned. The source of the disease is an estimated 2 billion tons of wastewater discharged into rivers and seas every day.

SOS Children’s Villages seek to provide orphaned or abandoned children with an environment in which they are able to live normal lives. They come under the care of specially-trained SOS mothers and have SOS siblings to play with, providing a familial environment and promise to children whose life outcomes would otherwise be very bleak.

Children’s Villages has partnered with the Coca-Cola Foundation and Coca-Cola India to provide clean water through sustainable means. The project involves harvesting rainwater and artificially recharging resources. This provides communities with an accessible, healthy source of water.

The project began in one SOS Village in Faridabad and will be expanded this year.

Although the organisation is renowned for the quality of care provided in its homes, this kind of project demonstrates how they make it an equal priority to eliminate the causes that see children requiring their care in the first place.

In India they run schools and clinics that seek to provide support to local families. SOS counsels parents on disease prevention and encourages an entrepreneurial spirit by teaching skills needed to start small businesses. They hope that this education will gradually lead communtities towards becoming self-sufficient and fewer children ending up on the streets.

SPONSOR AN ORPHAN WITH SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGES