SOS Children's Villages - inception

Hermann Gmeiner was an Austrian philanthropist and the founder of SOS Children's Villages.

Having experienced the horrors of war himself as a soldier in Russia, he was then confronted with the isolation and suffering of the many war orphans and homeless children as a child welfare worker after the end of the Second World War. In his conviction that help can never be effective as long as the children have to grow up without a home of their own, he set about implementing his idea for SOS Children's Villages.

By 1985 the result of Hermann Gmeiner's work was a total of 233 SOS Children's Villages in 85 countries. In recognition of his services to orphaned and abandoned children he received numerous awards and was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, he was always at pains to stress that it was only thanks to the support of millions of people that it had been possible to achieve the goal of providing abandoned children with a permanent home, and that still applies today.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• SOS Children's Villages
• Hermann Gmeiner
• World war
• orphans
• child welfare
• Nobel Peace Prize