About
Founded in Imst, Austria, in 1949, SOS Children’s Villages has since become one of the world’s largest charities dedicated to providing safe, loving homes to orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children.
Today, in over 560 SOS Children’s Villages globally, we work with communities to provide a loving home for children who have lost the care of their parents. Our professionally trained, local SOS mothers ensure that every child and young person grows up with the support, sense of belonging, education, and life skills necessary for them to reach their full potential.
We also offer tailored support to impoverished, struggling families to prevent child abandonment. We empower them to overcome their difficulties, stay together, and thrive. Our 600 Family Strengthening Programs provide them with counselling, parenting and professional skills development, education, and health care.
When disaster strikes, we protect and care for children who are especially vulnerable in times of conflict and crisis. Since we are already on the ground and part of the community in over 130 countries around the world, we can quickly act to save their lives, protect their rights, and support their families.
We provide quality health care in over 80 health programs to the children in our care, and families from surrounding communities – often where no other medical facilities exist. Access to quality health care results in fewer children at risk of being orphaned or abandoned.
We place children’s and young people’s voices at the heart of our advocacy work. We encourage children to actively take part in the decision-making processes that affect their lives and speak up for themselves. By advocating to uphold their rights, all children can become their strongest selves.
You can help us transform the lives of orphaned and other vulnerable children and their families ― today and into the future.
How your gift will be used
You may be surprised to realize how incredible a gift in your will can be. People are sometimes thrilled to learn that an apparently modest bequest (even a tiny fraction of their estate) can actually amount to more money for the children and families in our care than they gave in their entire lifetime. Bequests are indeed an opportunity for ordinary supporters to make truly extraordinary philanthropic gifts.
If you do decide to make a gift in your will to SOS Children’s Villages Canada, you will transform countless lives – for generations to come. Your bequest – be it magnificent or modest – is a gesture of pure love extended to a child you will probably never meet. Perhaps that child is yet to be born.
The word philanthropy means “love of humankind.” Surely, those who plan these bequests for some of the world’s most vulnerable and desperate members of society are making the noblest of philanthropic gifts.
