SOS Children's Villages offer new homes to children who are orphaned, abandoned or who are either unlikely or unable to return to their birth families. This form of care provides a caring family-type environment for the children. Five to ten boys and girls live with an SOS mother in a house. Ten to 15 families make a community. The villages are the basis of SOS Children’s Villages worldwide work.

What are parents to do when their youngest cannot stop crying, because they are hungry? How can they earn the money to send the oldest to school? How can they pay the doctor? The charity SOS Children’s Villages helps families in need all over the world. The main target is to intervene and so prevent children ending up living on the streets.

Young people can only expect to get jobs, if they have the appropriate education and training. But in disadvantaged countries and regions there are very few opportunities for vocational training. Many young people in Kenya or Nicaragua can only dream of becoming car mechanics or nurses. SOS Children’ Villages help prepare young people for independent lives, there are 104 vocational training centres all over the world.