The Daily Star - SOS village provides children with families - March 10, 2011

Organization builds communities in which young people who lack parental care can thrive
By Annie Slemrod
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Around many neatly tended corners in the mountain village of Kfarhay is a swing set or a slide. This is not because the residents are unusually fun-loving, but because the most important ones are under the age of 14. Welcome to SOS Children’s Village Kfarhay, one of four communities in the country run by the Lebanese Association of SOS Children’s Villages.

The first SOS Children’s Village was founded in 1949 in Imst, Austria, by Hermann Gmeiner, with the objective of providing family-based attention to children who lack parental care. Since 1949, the organization has expanded to include 423 villages in 123 countries.

Lebanon’s first SOS village was established in 1969, in Bhersaf in the Metn. In 1981 a village in Sferai opened, followed by Kfarhay in 1995. The newest village in Ksarnaba in the Bekaa got its start in 2006. Some 280 children currently live in these villages.

Kids live in houses headed by Lebanese “mothers,” with other children who become their brothers and sisters. Education and medical care are provided by SOS, and around the age of 14 or 15 the kids move to one of seven “youth houses” where they learn to become more self-sufficient.

Eventually SOS helps its charges find jobs and pays for university – it provides for the children until they are fully independent.

Children come to the SOS villages from a variety of backgrounds. Some are orphans, while others have a parent unable to provide for them.

Other children have been abandoned or removed from dangerous home situations. Admission is done on a case-by-case basis, says SOS Lebanon’s deputy national director Lina Sarkis, who notes that SOS “never turns away orphans.”

Miriam, a 13-year-old resident of Kfarhay, says “I lived with my mom, and after she died I lived with my sister for one year,” before coming to Kfarhay, where she has been for six years. She adds that she would like to be an architect someday.

Another young resident and hopeful future doctor, Christine, 14, says that her parents “had a problem” and so she came to SOS. She has been living at Kfarhay for seven years.

While SOS is an international organization, Wilfried Vyzlozil, the general director of the Hermann Gmeiner Fund, stresses that it is not a European missionary operation and strives to adapt to local circumstances.

SOS’ Family Strengthening Program, which reaches out to parents who are having trouble caring for their children, was established in Lebanon during the Civil War.

Sarkis says the program was a direct result of the war as there were many widowed women who needed help caring for their children. Lebanon has two Family Strengthening centers, one in Beirut and one in the Bekaa.

This scheme emphasizes practicality, says Sarkis. It aims to help women with children support themselves.