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In adult life we reveal how we fared in childhood. The quality of childhood is critical – as a help or hindrance in later life. What set the stage for our future development – loss and hurt, or love and respect? Although we all know that childhood is decisive, children are still ignored, manipulated, abused and abandoned. At SOS Children’s Villages we are committed to the welfare of children – often throughout the whole of their childhood – and to strengthening families and communities as a preventive measure in the fight against abandonment and social neglect.

It is a truly difficult – but also rewarding – task for an organization to seek to restore the balance in life for abandoned, destitute, and spiritually and physically traumatized children, to pick them up when crisis brings them down, to give them individual support, to take them by the hand on the road from childhood to adulthood. The influence of childhood on adults applies equally to us as an organization with its own special history. The beginnings of SOS Children’s Villages are decisive for our further development, but as we „grow up“ the present is the yardstick for our Endeavour and the future the challenge. It is this synthesis of the traditional and the modern, of professionalism and compassion, that guides SOS Children’s Villages in meeting the responsibilities it has assumed for thousands of children and young adults.

The mission statement of SOS Children's Villages defines the general framework, our motivation and commitment to genuine social change that will benefit children worldwide. That is our vision, which we are working to achieve step by step, to help children enjoy their right to a childhood and to healthy development, through a family right to a childhood and to healthy development, through a family

Helmut Kutin, President