“The love of a family is life’s greatest blessing”. Anonymous.

It was a chance encounter at an airport with an old friend.  My old friend Sandilya told me that since retiring he had been volunteering as the non-executive chairman of the SOS children’s villages in India. I was intrigued by his description of a community designed solely to help poor orphans. “Come and visit,” he urged. 

That’s how my wife Girija and I ended up at the village in Tambaram, in the outskirts of Chennai. The man in charge of that particular village, Mr. Varadarajan, showed us around and explained these villages that provide a home to destitute children who have lost both parents. The unique feature of SOS is the house mother – the Chennai centre has 15 houses, each with its own ‘mother’ who brings up the children. To provide a family environment, each mother takes responsibility for bringing up around 10 children, of varying age groups, like in any other large family. She oversees a monthly budget and takes care of all the children, relying on the older kids chip in on the chores.

While the village administration, school, medical facilities and auditorium are maintained by the SOS village administration group, each house is independently run by the house mothers, who tend to be single women with the singular set of skills and temperament needed to oversee a large, busy household. They are selected very carefully and undergo training for a couple of years before they are deemed fit to take charge of a home. The interaction among children across houses is like those of neighbors. The Chennai centre has its own primary school, and the older children attend local high schools in Tambaram.

We visited one of the houses. Only a few young children were home with the mother; the other children were at school. The mother proudly showed us pictures of some of her ‘children’ who were now grown up and married. They stayed in touch with her.  In fact, that very day one of the grown children was getting married and the whole village was scheduled to attend the wedding ceremony.

Many of the children who grew up in the villages doing well in life: doctors, engineers and other professionals who are working in India and abroad. Several retired mothers are now living with their adopted children. Many well-to-do siblings look after the less fortunate kids they grew up with.

SOS is an international organization founded by Hermann Gmeiner in Austria. Hermann’s own mother died when he was young and he was brought up by his elder sister. As a soldier during the Second World War, he was confronted with the travails of orphans and homeless children and was convinced that the best solution was for them to grow up in a family. This conviction led to his setting up the first SOS Children’s village in Imst, Austria.

The SOS organization has grown to more than 132 countries, supporting around 60,000 children. SOS came to India in 1964 and today has around 40 villages supporting 6,000 children directly. In addition, an outreach program covers another 15,000 children.

Having visited several homes for orphans and destitute children, I was impressed with the simplicity and scalability of the SOS Children’s villages model. I have been urging some other NGO’s to learn from the SOS model. Please do share examples that you have come across in providing a support base and leg up to destitute children.

Long live the earth.