We are an independent, non-governmental and non-profit organisation working for the holistic development of parentless children as well as women and children from vulnerable families. Founded in 1949 in Austria, SOS Children’s Villages began its India operations in 1964. For over 60 years, we have reached over 65,000 children through our 31 SOS Children’s Villages and 27 community projects in India positively impacting over 83000 lives. SOS India has worked with children, communities, disaster struck and disaster-prone areas, giving hope to vulnerable communities and families. SOS India has the largest operation within the SOS International Federation of 134 countries.

At SOS Children’s Villages India, we are committed to the welfare of parentless and abandoned children as well as working out ways to strengthen families and communities as a preventive measure in the fight against abandonment and social neglect.

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The Family Strengthening Programme (FSP) is a community-based outreach approach, which is focused on empowering vulnerable families and communities so that they can adequately care for their children. Children belonging to vulnerable families and communities are at a risk of being abandoned and, therefore, through the programme, the focus is to prevent children from losing parental care.

We support families/individuals in generating sustainable income, while building their capacity to ensure that children are provided with an environment where they are well cared for and their basic rights to education, skilling, health and nutrition, amongst others, are met.

The programme is designed to provide vulnerable children with essential services

such as health, nutrition and education. Women from disadvantaged families, supported through the programme, are primary caregivers, who are strengthened to be financially independent and self-sustainable through livelihood support extended for promotion of income generation activities. Capacities of primary caregivers are essentially enhanced in the areas of parenting and care, child protection and financial literacy so that they can, in turn, ensure to provide for and contribute actively towards the holistic development of their children. Another integral part of the programme is the Bal Panchayat (Children’s Parliament) model that gives young ones a collective voice through a democratic platform at the grassroots level.