For the past 26-years, SOS Children’s Villages Association of South Africa, a non-profit organisation and the largest private children’s welfare organisation in the world, has been raising orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children nationally. Through the establishment of villages, which are headed by a Village Director and assisted by SOS house-mothers, the organisation is able to build families for children in need.

Thousands of children are abandoned annually in South Africa, a frightening realisation when considering that children are the future and our societal wellbeing depends on the strength and cohesion of family. Since 2006 the number of babies abandoned in hospitals and public places has doubled, and it has been estimated that by 2010, orphans will constitute between nine and 12% of the South African population.